


Space

by EclecticInkling



Series: The Planets Bend Between Us [1]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Astronaut AU, Character Death, Long-Distance Relationship, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, Pining, botanist oikawa, futuristic space travel, iwaoi being saps, not iwa or oikawa though i swear, pilot iwaizumi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-02
Updated: 2017-02-08
Packaged: 2018-07-19 14:17:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 44,305
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7364818
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EclecticInkling/pseuds/EclecticInkling
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tooru imagines fields of grass and wheat and flowers covering the now-barren landscape, fed by the scattered lakes and underground water reservoirs of Carystus, and tries not to think of the life on the planet they left behind. Tries not to think of his rooftop garden, or the apartment he used to inhabit, or Hajime’s broken expression on the night they whispered their goodbyes before Tooru’s launch, attempting to push it all to the back of his mind behind visions of this alien world terraformed.</p><p>It doesn’t work, but at least he tries.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Remmi: "Welcome to Suffering" 
> 
> This is a 2-shot, so this first chapter is only half of the entire story. 
> 
> This fic is written in a non-linear form! It will jump back and forth between various times and places.
> 
> By the way, Bean (@tolbean) made an amazing playlist for this fic, [ which you can listen to here](http://8tracks.com/sarahmaah/you-re-as-beautiful-as-endless) !!!! [ Or on Spotify!!](https://open.spotify.com/user/beanmcgee/playlist/3BliJdq12sV8RloHWGGKCd)
> 
> Mars (@yaboykeiji) also drew [ this incredible piece of art ](http://yaboykeiji.tumblr.com/post/148755183839/he-thinks-back-to-when-he-first-applied-to-the) ! And some more art by [ Katie (oikawa-the-grand-king) ](http://oikawa-the-grand-king.tumblr.com/post/146825623555/is-it-stupid-to-want-to-stay-with-you-tooru) and [ Rex (@adhdkyoutani) ](https://twitter.com/adhdkyoutani/status/763782976916291585) !! 
> 
> Thank you all so, so much! I am so honored!!!!
> 
> (feel free to follow/ talk to me on [ twitter](https://twitter.com/EclecticInkling) or [ tumblr](http://eclecticinkling.tumblr.com/)!!!)

Sol 1,276  
Mission Log #612

I miss him.

 

* * *

 

They finish setting up the greenhouse by the end of their second week. It’s smaller than Tooru’s used to, with only enough room for two columns of plants as well as his and Yahaba’s individual workbenches right near the door, but he supposes that doesn’t really matter. It’s enough room for them to get a few crops started and see how they’ll react to the soil of this new planet. Getting those plants to flourish in the small, rocky field just outside the greenhouse’s clear tarps is the ultimate goal, as the JAXA directors made sure to stress in training. The greenhouse is simply the starting point.

Tooru gently places the mizuna seedling plug into its hole and scoops the greenhouse soil— a precise mixture of both Earth and Carystus dirt— to cover up its roots. He’s careful to make sure it’s fully planted, and to give it the exact amount of water it needs, conscious of their team’s limited resources of both seedlings and water. In the other column across from him, Yahaba does the same with a potato spud, just as they had for the radishes and rice and wheat and other such JAXA-approved plants that fill the rest of the dirt in the greenhouse. Yahaba is possibly even more cautious in his movements than Tooru, determined to make this first experiment of theirs a complete success.

Tooru doesn’t worry too much though. He has a good feeling about these plants. And if they survive, as Tooru is certain they will, then running out of seedlings won’t be an issue, regardless of how the plants fare in the natural environment of Carystus.

“Just think, Shi-chan,” Tooru says as he stands and brushes dirt from his pants, “in a few more months we’ll be eating home-grown vegetables again. Instead of those nasty freeze-dried meals we’re forced to endure.”

“They aren’t so bad,” Yahaba replies, though it sounds more like a question than anything else. Like even Yahaba’s unsure of the quality of their special space meals. Tooru scrunches up his nose.

“Try telling yourself that in a month, Shi-chan. You’ll be begging for these vegetables by then.”

He looks up at the arched poles and clear canvas holding their sanctuary together. Light beams through the material, brighter than the Sun in their own solar system would have. Already, the greenhouse is soaking in the light, soaking in the warmth, trapping it all within the confines of the canvas. They’ll probably need to figure out a way to shade the plants a bit from the intensity of this new sun, but for now they’ll just see how the plants hold up. It might not even matter in the end.

The clear blue sky is familiar to Tooru though, and reminds him of his home back on Earth. That penthouse apartment with the rooftop garden, far above the hectic crowds of Tsukuba, which he shared with his boyfriend until their team’s launch to the Alpha Centauri system. The sky here is even brighter and clearer, unobstructed by the skyscrapers and thick smog Tooru is so used to. Only the smallest wisps of clouds crawl across the horizon, and at night the velvet darkness is strewn with the light of millions of stars— some familiar, many alien, all beautiful.

It’s not a bad place to spend his life, Tooru figures. Even if he does miss some of the comforts of Earth, and the people attached to them.

“How’s the planting going?” Kuroo asks, leaning his upper body through the door to check on their progress. Even in his casual clothes of a white tshirt and tan cargo pants, he still wears the bright red armband of commander.

“All finished. Just as I said we’d be,” Tooru answers with a flash of his signature peace sign. Kuroo rolls his eyes, and Tooru grins. “How about the Hab? You get communications working yet?”

“It’s all set up, except for your workbenches. If you’re all finished, I can get Akaashi in here to get your desktops hooked in.”

Tooru glances back at Yahaba, who’s putting all of their equipment back into the plastic crates at the other end of the greenhouse, and then nods. “Yeah, we’re good. Go ahead.”

It’ll be nice to finally receive all those missed messages from when they were at light speed. Of course, the trip had only been a few weeks for Tooru and the crew, but all of that equaled to around five or six years for the people back on Earth. He wonders how many messages his family sent during that time, and whether the botany team back at JAXA headquarters sent along any new experiments for him and Yahaba to conduct. Maybe he’ll finally be able to have a live feed call with Hajime again! Goodness knows how much he’s missed seeing his boyfriend’s face; those few weeks without contact felt like an entire lifetime.

He and Yahaba retreat to the small kitchen area of the Hab and eat some of those nasty freeze-dried meals while Akaashi temporarily takes over their greenhouse, getting both of their desktops online and ready for use. They discuss their preliminary observations and future plans for their first batch of crops, which Tooru will take note of later in the mission log as per regulation. But for now, it’s fun to discuss the eventual success of their plants.

Tooru imagines fields of grass and wheat and flowers covering the now-barren landscape, fed by the scattered lakes and underground water reservoirs of Carystus, and tries not to think of the life on the planet they left behind. Tries not to think of his rooftop garden, or the apartment he used to inhabit, or Hajime’s broken expression on the night they whispered their goodbyes before Tooru’s launch, attempting to push it all to the back of his mind behind visions of this alien world terraformed.

It doesn’t work, but at least he tries.

 

* * *

 

Sol 16  
Mission log #118

The Hab and greenhouse are all set up and ready for whatever Carystus throws at them. I was doubtful about the canvas holding up against the weather at first, but it’s apparently stronger than it seems. Kei-chan says it’s able to withstand wind speeds of up to 600 mph without tearing or stretching, so it should be up to task, despite my doubts.

Planted the first seeds the other day. _Brassica rapa nipposinica, Oryza sativa, Raphanus sativus, Triticum aestivum, Cucumis sativus, Brassica rapa perviridis, Arabidopsis thaliana, Pisum sativum, Solanum tuberosum_ , and _Allium cepa_. It’s too early to tell yet, but they seem to be taking to the environment so far. Will keep watching and taking notes. If all goes well, we’ll start experimenting outside the greenhouse with the next crop.

On a personal note: I’ll get to call Hajime at the end of this week. First time since before going to light speed. I’m excited, but also nervous.

 

* * *

 

Tooru is seven when he sees his first meteor shower.

His parents take him out to a remote field, where the lights and smoke of the city won’t get in the way of the view, and they lay out a tattered, plaid blanket atop the lush grass. There are others who do the same; families with children around Tooru and his brother’s ages, who all saw the report about the meteor shower on the news that morning and decided to turn it into a grand affair of sorts. Tooru recognizes a few kids from his class at school, and they play tag together under their parents’ watchful eyes as the sun sets and the sky turns from blue to orange to pink to navy, the first twinkling of diamond-like stars being strung up across the velvety darkness.

“Tooru!” his mother calls when it becomes too dark to continue playing. He doesn’t want to stop, doesn’t really care about staring at the sky, but still he obediently returns to his parents and sits snug in his mother’s lap, where her warmth chases away the chill of the night air. “You’re going to miss it if you keep watching the ground, Tooru,” she says. “You have to look up to see the magic.”

Tooru doesn’t really get what she means. The sky, when he glances up, looks just the same as it always does, except with a lot more stars. Nice to look at, but kind of boring.

Still, it’s nice to lean back against his mother and sit in the gentle quiet of the night, soft murmurings of distant conversations slowly lulling him to sleep. His focus flickers, eyelids drooping, sight growing blurry until all the stars above seem to be swimming through a pool of bright stardust. They wink down at him, and dance with diamonds beneath their feet, and Tooru swears he can hear the wind whistling through them, high and clear and pure.

A flash of light cuts through his vision.

His eyes open wide and focus clears. The night sky is silent and still, like the streak of light Tooru saw never happened in the first place. He can almost believe he just imagined it as a product of his sleepy mind, but then another streak flies across the darkness. And then another. And another. And even more. Falling and falling and falling in bright streams before burning into nonexistence. Brilliance raining from the heavens.

Tooru is enchanted.

He’s ten when he gets his first telescope— just a toy compared to the massive machines real scientists use, but powerful enough for Tooru to make out all the valleys and craters flecked across the moon’s surface on clear nights. Some times to even see Mars or Venus when he’s positioned just right. And he wishes and wishes to look closer, to look beyond, to see all the things he’s read about in the books of his school’s library.

He’s fascinated by the worlds beyond their atmosphere. Wants to know everything he can. His teachers talk about their orbits, their sizes, their atmospheres, their moons. About the different space programs and all the astronauts that visited the moon and Mars and Venus, and the probes that went to star systems far beyond where humans could travel.

Tooru laps it all up like someone dying of thirst.

He builds a mini galaxy out of plastic cups and Styrofoam spheres and, with his father’s help, hangs it from the ceiling of his bedroom, with their solar system suspended right above his bed. In the right corner, he hangs Sirius A and Sirius B with all the smaller stars that make up the Sirius Supercluster, while Tau Ceti and its five planets take the left corner. And in the middle of the room he places Alpha Centauri A, B, and Proxima Centauri, along with all the planets and moons orbiting the three different stars.

At night, when the glow-in-the-dark stars on his walls and ceiling are the only source of light in his room, Tooru lays on his bed with a toy space ship in hand and imagines what it’d be like to fly through space, past all the planets of their solar system, and journey to a world unknown.

 

* * *

 

The Fujin probes were sent by the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency, with the assistance of the newly reestablished National Aeronautics and Space Administration of America, to search out close star systems with habitable planets as part of Japan’s new colonization program.

Tooru first hears of the probes when he’s twenty-two, fresh out of university with a double major in plant biology and chemistry, and applying to train with the Japanese space program in Tsukuba. The probes are a pretty big deal within the science community, with their advanced measurement systems and light speed capability, and news of their development fills the various forums Tooru frequents for about a year, until they launch into space and then seemingly become irrelevant. He, like the rest of the world, forgets all about the probes for a time, and it’s not until much later, after Tooru’s already graduated from the space program and is working with the JAXA botany team, that he hears about them again.

Tooru rushes home early that morning, after a shift in the lab lasting until three in the morning. Even at such an early hour, Tsukuba Science City is still wide awake, with people milling in and out of almost all of its 300 research facilities with deep bags under their eyes which match Tooru’s own. But Tooru’s too tired and far too distracted to really notice. He only pays enough attention to avoid bumping into them as he walks away from the research centers to the suburban district of the city, and his blessedly peaceful apartment.

It’s completely dark when he steps inside. Hajime’s coat and shoes sit by the door, next to the tree trunk umbrella stand Hajime once bought him as a joke and Tooru still refuses to get rid of. Tooru toes off his own sneakers and tosses his messenger bag onto their beige suede couch as he crosses the apartment to their bedroom, where he finds Hajime already asleep. Tooru doesn’t even bother to change out of his slacks and button down shirt; he’s so exhausted that he just crawls into bed and curls his body around Hajime’s, with one arm draped across Hajime’s waist and his nose buried in the feathery strands of Hajime’s hair.

His boyfriend smells of fresh pine, and Tooru breathes it all in, letting the familiar scent fill his senses and chase away all the tension from a long day at work. _He must have showered when he got home_ , Tooru thinks, and only briefly regrets that he won’t be able to do the same until he wakes up tomorrow morning.

Hajime stirs next to him, rolling over to press his face against Tooru’s shoulder and intertwine their legs. “You’re home,” he whispers into Tooru’s shirt. His hands slide up Tooru’s chest, over the smooth cotton and each individual button, and he lets out a soft grunt. “You didn’t change.”

“Don’t wanna,” Tooru whines. “I’m too tired. And moving takes work.”

“Big baby.”

Smiling, Tooru tightens his hold on Hajime, who grumbles sleepily about the movement and the shirt buttons poking against his skin and being woken up at nearly four in the morning by a big baby man, but still shifts to accommodate their change in position. His breath blows warm across the skin of Tooru’s neck, fingers curled into Tooru’s shirt, and it’s all so familiar and peaceful that Tooru can’t help the rush of fondness that washes over him like a gentle wave. He can’t imagine anything better than this, right here, holding Hajime in his arms.

He trails fingers down Hajime’s back, tracing every small bump of his vertebrae down his smooth, warm skin. “I heard something interesting today,” Tooru murmurs. “One of the Fujin probes made contact from the Alpha Centauri system. Apparently, its first measurements show good possibility for sustaining life.”

“Researchers gonna be,” he yawns loudly, “busy. Late work for you?”

“No. Not yet,” Tooru answers easily. Tonight was just a fluke, a few experiments falling behind that desperately needed some attention before he could turn in for the night, but so far it doesn’t seem like he’ll need to stay any later than usual for the foreseeable future. And for that, at least, he’s grateful. He hates having to work through the night, having to miss the small bit of time he and Hajime are able to get between the hectic schedules their different jobs. Hajime hums a little, as if in agreement, then nuzzles his face into the crook of Tooru’s neck.

“Too bad. ‘S quiet without you.”

Tooru laughs and pokes Hajime in the side, right underneath his rib where’s he’s most ticklish. “That’s rude, Hajime. And here I was about to tell something amazing. Maybe I’ll just keep it to myself now.”

“Impossible,” Hajime answers, smiling against Tooru’s skin. “You’re terrible with secrets.”

“No I’m not. You take that back.”

“Nope. Remember two months ago?” he asks, bringing up the incident when Tooru single-handedly ruined a close friend’s surprise party by accidentally slipping it into their conversation without even realizing. Tooru can’t really argue with him about it, knowing full well it was all his own fault, and Hajime seems to know this. He lifts his head up to grin lopsidedly at Tooru, eyes still hooded with sleep. “So what’s this amazing thing you won’t tell me?”

Tooru presses his lips together and stares down at his boyfriend. Watches the shadows play across his dark skin and disheveled hair, sees the amusement dancing behind the languor in his eyes, and Tooru caves.

“They’re talking about sending a team out there if the samples continue to be good,” he admits. “I think we should apply.”

Hajime’s eyes widen. His smile falls just a bit. “That’ll mean saying goodbye to everything and everyone here. That team won’t be coming back,” he says. Almost whispers, really. “Our friends. Our families.”

“Yeah, but just think about it, Hajime! We’d be the first ones to live on an alien planet! We’d get to discover a whole new world!”

He thinks back to when he first applied to the space program, and all the excitement he felt toward the possibility of interstellar discovery. To go beyond their solar system and into the unknown, where no one else has ventured before. It’s all he’s ever wanted.

Hajime seems more hesitant about the idea, judging by the worried lines between his brows. But if he is he keeps his thoughts to himself. “It might just be a rumor, Tooru,” he says, laying his head back against Tooru’s shoulder. Tooru cards his fingers through Hajime’s hair, and Hajime lets out a tiny sigh. “Let’s just get some sleep for now, ok?”

Tooru presses a kiss to the top of Hajime’s head in response.

 

* * *

 

Sol 72  
Mission Log #137

Plants are looking good! First sprouts have already popped up, and they seem to be growing like normal.

Good news: we won’t have to wonder about them thriving in the actual soil of Carystus. I’ve been analyzing the soil next to the greenhouse, and even took some soil samples whenever we did our mini-explorations away from the Hab just to make sure. But it all checks out. All necessary minerals seem to be present, especially in the soil near the pools of water we found the other day. I think the only places we won’t be able to plant are desert areas. Like the one the Fujin rover found the other day, about 26,000 kilometers east of the Hab.

(We’re still trying to think up names for it. I wanted to call it Arrakis, but I got overruled. Sorry, Frank Herbert.)

But anyways, that means our crops could theoretically grow across most of the planet. Just depending on the light exposure and the weather.

The extra sunlight I was worrying about actually turned out to be a good thing in the end. Carystus days might be longer, but the weather gets more temperamental and dusty as the day goes on, so that little boost of extra sunlight in the mornings is good for the plants. Evens out the low amount of exposure they get in the afternoon/evening. But now the weather is what’s worrying me. These wind storms are getting stronger and more frequent. I’m not sure if this is a typical occurrence, or if we’re just in some sort of storm season, but if it doesn’t let up I’m not sure the plants can withstand it. At least not the wheat, or the mizuna. Maybe the potatoes and radishes can if the dirt isn’t blown away from them.

Will have to keep watch on weather. Maybe start taking wind measurements if the storms don’t seem to let up by the time our plants are ready to harvest.

 

* * *

 

“That doesn’t look good,” Bokuto says over the radio. Tooru glances from the tiny grasses in the creek bed he’s analyzing to where Bokuto’s standing, several yards away. He’s facing the east, where large, dark clouds billow in a long line across the horizon. “Yo, Commander. You seein’ this?”

“I see it,” Kuroo responds. He’s a good two miles or so behind Tooru and Bokuto, in a shallow pool of water that Futakuchi’s combing for organism activity, but there’s a tightness to his voice that tells Tooru the storm cloud’s just as visible and menacing to Kuroo as it is to them, and that worries him.

There’s a long beat of silence over the radio. Bokuto turns around with tablet in hand to look at Tooru, who stares right back without saying a word. They’re both waiting for Kuroo’s command. They can neither continue with their tasks nor pack up and head back to the Hab without Kuroo’s say-so. All they can do is wait and watch the storm building over the flat line of the horizon.

It’s still a good bit of distance away from them; Tooru estimates maybe three or four hours before it even gets close to where they’re now standing. It looks stronger than usual though. Definitely darker. Small flashes of lightning rippling through the heavy mass in a sporadic staccato. Even from a distance, Tooru can feel the change in atmosphere, cool wind blowing across his cheeks and through his hair where there was no wind before. There’s a sort of metallic smell to it that fills his throat and mouth as he inhales, and it sits heavy on his tongue.

He doesn’t like the feel of it. There’s something about the storm that raises the hackles in his mind, and it’s all he can do to just sit there and wait instead of fleeing back to the relative safety of the Hab.

“Alright, we’re scrubbing,” Kuroo finally tells them. “Pack up and head back. We’ll meet you there.”

Tooru doesn’t need to be told twice.

He doesn’t bother to take a sample from the creek bed. Just packs up his equipment and goes, crawling into the back of Rover 2 while Bokuto takes the front. Bokuto all but floors the acceleration in their haste to get away, and normally Tooru would chastise him for that but right now Tooru’s only focused on fleeing the storm. Reckless driving be damned, he’s not about to get stuck in that unknown anomaly. Even if he loses a few years of his life from Bokuto’s sharp turns.

They reach the Hab at the same time as Kuroo and Futakuchi. Already the wind is picking up. And what was a slight, metallic breeze back in the field is now a growing gale, strong enough to blow Tooru to the side and send him stumbling into Bokuto. He catches Tooru about the waist and sets him straight, then all four of them hurry into the safety of the Hab without another word. Kuroo doesn’t even give Bokuto a look, though he must know exactly the kind of driving Bokuto did in order to catch up with the other Rover, which was a full two miles closer to the Hab than their own. That alone says more to Tooru about the gravity of the storm than any words ever could.

“Storm,” Kuroo says in explanation when the four of them tumble into the shared living space of the Hab, causing both Akaashi and Yahaba to shoot up from their seats in alarm. Kuroo quickly waves away their exclamations and concerns, and instead asks, “Is everything sealed? Nothing left open? Nothing outside?”

Akaashi shakes his head. “No, we’re all set. Unless,” he glances in Tooru’s direction, “the greenhouse?”

“I’ll check on it,” Tooru answers.

In truth, he’s a little worried about the greenhouse as well. He rushes across the Hab’s living space, down the hallway to the door connecting his greenhouse and the Hab. Somewhere between one end of the hallway and the door, the brunt of the storm actually hits, and it shakes the walls of the Hab beneath its pressure. There’s a little scraping sound across the roof. Sharp particles getting blown across the thin metal. It reminds Tooru somewhat of a typhoon, except with dirt instead of pouring rain and wind speeds twice as fast as the most violent formation. Maybe even faster.

Tooru bites his lip. He knows the greenhouse itself is closed off from the storm, but he’s a little doubtful about the security of the tarps that cover it all, despite Akaashi’s assurance of their durability in strong winds. If any part of the tarps rip, the plants he and Yahaba worked so hard to cultivate won’t stand a chance. Not in this wind.

He sees a vision of his rooftop garden back on Earth, ceramic pots pushed from their places and shattered across the ground in piles of dirt and leaves and petals and pottery shards, and he feels anxiety curl deep within his gut.

The noise grows louder when Tooru opens the door, and a burst of acrid air rushes past him. Tooru doesn’t wait for the door to open all the way, but slips inside the greenhouse in a frenzy. Thankfully, however, he finds everything exactly as it should be within the greenhouse, minus the storm raging just outside, growing stronger and stronger with every gust.

The tarps ripple and snap under the force of the wind, but don’t show any signs of ripping or flying apart. Inside, his crops continue to sit in complete tranquility, unaware of the thick cloud of dust blocking out the sun, of the screaming winds and flashing lightning, and Tooru lets out a short breath. His plants are fine. They’re safe. There’s no need for him to worry. At least not about his crops.

A bright flash fills the greenhouse and blinds him. He blinks, spots clouding his vision, and presses his back against the Hab wall, his left hand resting on the cold surface of his metal workbench. A shiver races down his spine. All around, the poles creaks, tarps cracking against the storm like a whip. Sands and particles scrape against the plastic material. Tooru’s heart pounds. The howling doesn’t cease.

_Is this what it’s normally going to be like?_ he wonders. _Is this what I’ll have to get used to?_

When his sight clears, it’s much darker. The Hab is fully encompassed by the storm, and what sunlight they usually get around this time in the late afternoon is completely wiped away by the thick clouds being blown across the planet. Tooru glances down at his workbench to switch on his lamp, but instead his gaze lands upon the plain ceramic pot holding a small, flowering cactus.

He pauses. His finger brushes against the small pot, the only plant he’d brought from his actual apartment in Tsukuba.

For a moment, he’s back there. The howling is nothing more than the wind from a typhoon— still frightening, but hardly dangerous with how securely their apartment’s built. The plants all sit around him in their decorated pots, snug and warm and safe from the tempest outside thanks to Hajime’s help in bringing them down from the rooftop garden. A little slice of peaceful paradise inside their dark living room. He leans back against Hajime, feels Hajime’s strong arms wrap around his torso in a loose embrace, as familiar to Tooru as the beige couch they’re resting on and the thick quilt tucked snug around them both, and Tooru relaxes. Safe. Secure. Loved.

Another flash of light, and he’s back in the greenhouse. The cold metal of his workbench and constant flapping of the tarps does little to alleviate his fears, and he longs to be back home on Earth, or to at least have all of his earthly comforts here on Carystus with him. There’s a pain in his chest he refuses to acknowledge, and a weight in his stomach he staunchly ignores.

He takes the cactus plant back to the small room he shares with Yahaba and sets it on the small table beside their bunk bed. The storm continues to rage, but it’s less noticeable here, in this small room with only a single wall facing the outside. More like a bad rainstorm back on Earth than the terror it actually is.

“It’s ok,” he whispers to the cactus as he gets comfortable on the bottom bunk, all bundled up in blankets, with his spare pillow pressed against his back where another person’s warmth should be. His fingers ghost over the smooth surface of the cactus’s pot. “It’s ok, Iwa-chan. We’ll be ok.”

 

* * *

 

Sol 93  
Mission Log #144

We’re officially experiencing a storm season of some sort. The first storm was bad, but then they kept getting worse as the weeks went on. Now they’re starting to weaken, and to bring rain too. That’ll be good for the soil.

Miraculously, the Hab and greenhouse have survived. As have all of us. And all the plants.

We harvested the first potatoes during one of the storms. They grew just like they should. We replanted, and are also holding on to a potato for when the storms stop. All the others are a part of our diet now, along with the mizuna and the radishes and some others. The wheat will be ready to harvest soon too. Then we’ll just need to wait for a good time to start planting outside.

No other news today. Too tired to think. Storms aren’t conducive to sleeping. At least not for me.

 

* * *

 

Tooru bursts into their apartment that night like a whirlwind, slamming the door open and rushing into their kitchen, where he knows Hajime most likely is. He’s holding an open envelope in his hand, and already, despite having received it only a few hours ago, it’s all wrinkled and torn from the amount of times Tooru’s crushed it beneath his fingers from sheer excitement.

It doesn’t matter though. He knows exactly what the letter inside says. He’s read it so often that he has it memorized.

As expected, he finds Hajime in the kitchen, sitting at their small table with about three books open in front of him, and a whole binder full of official-looking papers held in his hands. Tooru briefly notes how rare it is to see Hajime bringing work back from the lab to their apartment, but doesn’t linger on the thought. It’s not like this is the first time Hajime’s done so, and with the sudden upswing in assignments due to the upcoming missions, it’s not really surprising. But busy or not, Tooru’s not about to let Hajime’s extra work put a damper on his spirits, and he plops himself down on Hajime’s lap before his boyfriend can utter a word of protest.

“Why are you still working?” he whines, pushing Hajime’s binder of papers from his hands onto the table, where his boyfriend can no longer reach them. Hajime huffs and scowls up at Tooru. There’s a little splotch of ink on his cheek, right next to his nose where he always taps his pen while thinking, and it crinkles up endearingly in the line of Hajime’s skin when his nose scrunches in annoyance.

“Tooru, please. I need to finish this.”

Tooru shakes his head. “Take a break for once, Hajime,” he says, and wipes the ink from Hajime’s face with his thumb. “Your weird-looking graphs can wait one more night. We should be celebrating.”

“And what exactly are we supposed to be celebrating tonight?” Hajime asks. He looks unamused. Probably because Tooru has uttered that exact same statement a million times before, sometimes for reasons as inconsequential as buying a new plant for his rooftop paradise, or seeing the premier of a new TV show he’s been dying to watch.

This time, however, he says it with good reason, and he gives Hajime a smug smile as he brandishes the crinkled letter in his hand before Hajime’s eyes, turned so that the JAXA seal and Mikaboshi logo are both plainly visible. “Ta-da!”

There’s little change in Hajime’s expression. At least not to the eyes of anyone less acquainted with Hajime’s little idiosyncrasies and twitches. But Tooru can see the hint of a smile threatening to break out from Hajime’s stubborn scowl, the small tremble at the corner of his lips that give away his pleasure and excitement. He glances over at the counter closest to them, and Tooru follows his gaze to see a matching envelope sitting atop the grey granite, identical to Tooru’s down to the worn creases and hasty tear through the JAXA seal.

“You got one too! I knew it!” Tooru crows triumphantly. Hajime breaks and lets his smile dawn across his face like the rising sun, and Tooru can’t help but to throw his arms around Hajime’s neck in a haphazard embrace.

Hajime laughs and holds Tooru steady, keeping the both of them from toppling to the ground. “I didn’t want to say anything until you had yours. I knew you’d want to celebrate together.”

“As if there was any doubt we’d be chosen,” he jokes. But it’s true. With three successful launches and several years of dedicated service under their belts, he and Hajime are the perfect choice for this mission. He had no worries about them getting accepted into the program. He’s just glad to see they were chosen for the first launch. “Just think! We’ll be the first humans to stand on a planet outside our own solar system!” He looks up at the ceiling, envisioning their future on a foreign planet, and their chance to become legends. “We’ll be considered heroes, Hajime! People will talk about the Mikaboshi I crew for centuries. We’ll be in history books, and science books. People will probably write biographies about us. Or at least research papers. Think they might make a movie about us one day?”

“Tooru,” Hajime tries to interject, but Tooru waves him away, not noticing the way Hajime’s smile falls with every word he utters.

“No, no, no. Seriously think about it. Think about how incredible this will be! The history we’ll make is comparable to Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin! Do you even realize?”

“Tooru.”

“We should go out to dinner to celebrate. After all, we won’t be able to enjoy such luxuries in about a year or so. We’ll be living off freeze-dried food packets, and you know how much I hate those.”

_“Tooru.”_

Tooru pauses mid-breath and glances back at Hajime, feeling the air rush out of his lungs when he sees Hajime’s brows furrowed, concern etched in every crease.

“What exactly does your letter say?” Hajime asks. Quietly. Which is odd because Tooru knows every mission letter JAXA hands out uses the same kind of wording, minus a few details here and there and the actual mission assignment.

“Well, you know. The standard. Got your application, reviewed it, Oikawa is totally outstanding and awe-inspiring,” Tooru jokes, trying to lighten up the atmosphere that seems to now be hanging in the kitchen at twice the normal pressure. Hajime just stares at him, and Tooru swallows back his teasing smile. “I’m assigned to the crew of the Mikaboshi I mission.”

Hajime closes his eyes, then breathes out. He gently nudges Tooru off his lap so he can stand and walk over to the letter sitting on the counter, which he passes over. Tooru is confused, because why would Hajime have him read a letter he already knows the contents of? There’s no difference between Hajime’s letter and Tooru’s own besides the name printed on it. Even the excited crumpling is identical, paper creased from hours of countless unfolding and refolding.

Tooru humors him though, and skims the paper. He’s right about the wording. It’s the same as usual. A carbon copy of Tooru’s own. Except for the assignment details near the bottom of the letter, where his heart freezes at the sight of a single, bolded phrase:

Mikaboshi II.

 

* * *

 

Dear Mr. Oikawa,

Thank you for your interest in the Mikaboshi program. After reviewing your application and your many years of service to the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency, we are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted into the program.

We would like to remind you that, by applying to the Mikaboshi program, you have agreed to help set up a self-sustaining colony on the planet Carystus, which orbits Alpha Centauri A at a distance of 1.26 astronomical units. It is a one-way trip.

According to your qualifications, you have been selected to join the crew of:

**Mikaboshi I**  
**Position: Payload Commander, Lead Botanist**  
**Flight Director: Ukai Keishin**  
**Departure Date: TBA**

Your Flight Director will contact you with more details as necessary. Should you wish to terminate your position in this program, speak with your Flight Director immediately. Crew positions will be permanent at the end of this month. Please make all necessary arrangements prior to your departure.

Sincerely,

Furudate Haruichi  
President of the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency

 

* * *

 

“So how does it feel?” Takahiro asks over the raucous chatter of the bar, leaning into Tooru’s shoulder so his voice can be heard. “Being a full-fledged astronaut, I mean.”

His words waft in front of Tooru’s nose, where Tooru can smell the alcohol on his breath, but Tooru finds he doesn’t care. Not the way he used to when he and Takahiro were struggling through the slogs of advanced biochemistry and biostatistics and genetics, drowning themselves in cheap beer every other weekend to forget their failed lab results. Tooru doesn’t care about the tiny slur in Takahiro’s voice, or the way he’s pressed against Tooru’s side, chin hooked over the leather shoulder of Tooru’s new, official JAXA Astronaut Corps jacket, or the dopey smile across his face that must be nearly identical to Tooru’s own, considering the ache in his cheeks from smiling so much.

Tooru doesn’t care. He can’t care. He’s too busy celebrating the fact that he’s here. A newly-minted astronaut already slated for his first mission to Mars in a few weeks. Just days away from beginning launch preparations. Just hours from becoming a graduate of the JAXA space program.

“Surreal,” he answers. “All this time dreaming and now I’m finally here. Graduating. What will I do with my time now?”

Takahiro grins. “Well, y’know. There’s the whole Mars thing coming up. Keep you busy for a while.”

“True,” Tooru laughs.

It’s kind of incredible, really, knowing that he’ll be standing on the rusting dust of Mars’s surface in only a matter of months. There’s a small research center, he knows, already set up in the Amazonis Planitia by a research team from years before, so it’s not the sort of pioneering expedition he’s always had in mind. He’ll be the 167th person to set foot on the Red Planet since NASA’s first landing almost forty years before, continuing the work of countless biologists and botanists before him. Just another blip in the history of space travel. But it’s enough.

It’s at least better than being stuck on the International Space Station for two months, like his first trip into space. He’ll finally get to stand on a foreign planet. See the stars from a new sky. And anyways, he has years ahead of him to explore the unknown. This is only the beginning for him.

He glances around the bar, at all the space program graduates currently celebrating with friends and family. He recognizes faces: Kuroo and Bokuto huddled together in a corner, Moniwa attempting to keep Kamasaki and Sasaya from wreaking havoc, Kiyoko talking with Daichi and some tall, nervous fellow Tooru’s seen wandering around the astrodynamics section of JAXA headquarters. And, in the middle of it all, Hajime, leaning back against a table with a half-drunk beer in hand, laughing at something Issei just said.

He throws his head back, dark hair at the nape of his neck brushing the leather of his own JAXA jacket, and lets his chest heave from the force of his laughter. A sound which, unfortunately, gets lost in the general chaos of the bar. But Tooru can still imagine its loud bubbling burst. Has heard it near a million times in their three years of friendship, as familiar to Tooru now as the glow-in-the-dark stars still plastered on his bedroom ceiling. Just as comforting too. Like finally coming home.

His heart flutters, and he tears his gaze away before Hajime can stop laughing and see Tooru staring at him with stars in his eyes, as has been happening with ever-increasing frequency as of late. Hajime just gives him a smile when it happens. The special one reserved only for Tooru, all soft around the edges and eyes folded into twin crescent-moons of delight. The one that always steals Tooru’s breath in the same way shooting stars did when he was a child.

_This is bad,_ he thinks, glaring down at his empty hands, which curl and uncurl against his thighs, all anxious and sweaty. This is dangerous territory to be in. Not just because Hajime is his best friend, and crushes on best friends don’t really tend to work out very well, from what Tooru’s heard. But then there’s also the Mars mission coming up. There’s so much he needs to do and prepare for, he has no time to deal with this growing infatuation of his, except in trying to set it aside. And that’s really the crucial bit.

He sighs. “Maybe I should invest in a hobby.”

“Maybe you should just go over there and kiss the poor guy,” Takahiro deadpans. He shifts, turning so that his back rather than his arm is now leaning against Tooru’s side, then rolls his head backwards to rest atop Tooru’s shoulder while adding, “I’m tired of watching you two dance around each other.”

“We haven’t been dancing around each other.”

Takahiro snorts. “Oh come off it. You two have been practically married since last year, after the… was it the space station thing you guys did together?” he asks, and Tooru grudgingly nods, knowing exactly what his friend is referring to. He can’t even deny it, because he remembers just how close he and Hajime got during those two months in space, and he knows what Takahiro’s saying is sort of true. “Just give the guy a break already.”

“We’ve talked about this before, Makki. You know why I can’t.”

“No. You’re just using the Mars mission as an excuse to be a coward,” he says, nose wrinkling. “JAXA has dealt with astronaut couples before. Even sent a pair up to the Moon’s research center a few years back on the same mission. If they could make it work, so can you.”

“Married is different from dating.”

“Not for you guys,” he says gleefully. Practically sings it. Then, beaming up at Tooru, he reaches over his head to pat Tooru’s cheek and adds, “You’re like our resident old-married-couple or something. If his ring doesn’t end up on your finger, I’ll have no hope left for humanity.”

“Now you’re just being dramatic,” Tooru laughs, but he can’t stop the heat crawling up his neck and over his ears at the image Takahiro’s words conjure up. A small house out in the country, with a large garden and a dog or two running about. Hajime on the front porch, tinkering with some new project while Tooru lounges by his side in the summer heat, listening to the songbirds and the high keen of whirring cicadas.

It feels so natural to imagine a future together like this, the same way having dirt beneath his fingernails and dreams full of distant stars feels natural. For once, nothing in his vision seems out of place, or forced to fit in. And when he glances bashfully back at Hajime, it’s easy to see him there. To see wheat waving in golden waves behind him, his dark skin even darker from the sun’s caress, light glinting off a golden band around his ring finger. To see a life together.

Maybe that should alarm Tooru, considering they aren’t even dating yet, let alone considering marriage, but it just doesn’t. Not even the slightest bit.

Hajime turns his head at that moment and locks gazes with Tooru. His laughter stops, disappearing from his lips like morning dew in favor of the warm smile dawning across his face, soft as the pale pink and blue sky just before a sunrise. Tooru feels heat spread from his ears all the way down to his toes. His fingertips tingle.

“After the mission,” he finally tells Takahiro, because it will be difficult enough to concentrate on his work with Hajime smiling at him like that without adding anything else into the mix. “I’ll talk to him about it after the mission.”

 

* * *

 

It isn’t right, Tooru decides in the dark of night, after Hajime has fallen asleep and Tooru is left staring at their star-covered ceiling, knowing that soon, in about eight to twelve months actually, he and Hajime won’t get to share the same bed. Or the same house. Or planet. Or even the same solar system. Not for another six years, at the very least.

Something about that doesn’t make sense to Tooru. He’s so used to having Hajime beside him, where he can see the tiny twitches at the corners of his mouth, and hear his soft, sleepy snorts and sighs, and feel his heartbeat pounding steadily beneath the palm of his hand. The very idea that Hajime won’t be there, right within reach, is unfathomable. It just… isn’t right. Tooru won’t stand for it.

“He’s one of the best pilots we have,” Tooru argues when he corners Ukai, his mission’s flight director, outside the JAXA headquarters a few days after receiving his letter. “He should be a part of our mission!”

“We already have a pilot,” Ukai points out.

“But is he as good as Iwaizumi?”

“You’ve worked with Bokuto before. You tell me.” Ukai crosses his arms, a lit cigarette held loosely between two fingers of his right hand, and leans back against the brick wall of the building. He looks unimpressed with Tooru’s arguments, but then he’s not usually a man who’s easily persuaded. Tooru’s had enough past experience with him in the space program to know this. “We already chose the teams, Oikawa. Unless someone drops out completely, we can’t change them.”

“No. You’re just refusing to consider—”

“Tooru,” Ukai interrupts, and Tooru knows better than to argue with his flight director when he’s using that tone of voice.

He shuts his mouth, feeling very much like a small child being scolded by their parent, and shrinks back into himself as he considers the situation. Ukai won’t budge on adding Hajime to his crew, this Tooru knows. And part of Tooru is afraid to question why. Because, as good as Bokuto Koutarou is, (and Tooru will admit he’s a _very_ good pilot when he puts his mind to it; probably even one of the best in their program), he’s no Iwaizumi Hajime. Not to Tooru. Never to Tooru.

Maybe that’s the problem.

“This isn’t right,” he mutters, more to himself than to Ukai, who does Tooru the courtesy of at least pretending not to notice Tooru’s distress. There’s something heavy sitting in his gut, and the weight of it makes him sick, almost like the first time he dealt with vertigo. An apt comparison since this entire situation has turned Tooru’s world, and everything Tooru knows, on its head.

He scrambles to make sense of it all. To find some sort of reason for the separation he’s being forced to make. A separation Tooru had never thought he’d have to endure, considering how he and Hajime have always been paired up for flights, ever since their first year in the training program. Hajime’s pilot to Tooru’s more specialized positions. A packaged deal.

Was he too quick to assume though? Did the program directors not care about the chemistry of their partnership in relation to their mission success? Or perhaps… did the program directors care too much?

Tooru tugs at his fingertips, sending little aches through his hand to distract from the growing nausea in his stomach. “This is because I’m dating him, isn’t it?” he quietly asks. Ukai looks over at him, glancing from the corner of his eyes, and then slowly, thankfully, shakes his head.

“If it was about your relationship, we wouldn’t be sending you guys up there at all.” He lifts the cigarette he’s holding to his lips and takes a long drag. The smoke billows out in a white stream, which wafts up into the sky to join the heavy smog overhead. A cloud ceiling that leaves Tooru anxious, itching to break out. He shuffles his feet against the concrete. Beside him, Ukai sighs. “Look, we know you two would work fine together. That’s not what we were worried about. Bokuto’s scores were just slightly above Iwaizumi’s. That’s why we chose him.”

“Then put me on the second mission crew instead.”

“Are you kidding?” Ukai exclaims, coughing around the smoke he just inhaled from his surprise. And if Tooru didn’t feel like a scolded child before, he definitely feels like one now, mentally cowering under Ukai’s heavy gaze like he’s just been caught with his hand in the cookie jar. “You’re our best botanist. We _need_ you on the first crew.” There’s no way for Tooru to refute that, knowing just how vital his role is to the overall success of the mission, so he just stays silent. Even though he really just wants to argue until he’s able to get his way and set his world right again. He presses his lips into a thin line and turns away from the temptation, just as Ukai narrows his gaze on Tooru. “I don’t get you sometimes. Isn’t this your dream?”

Tooru isn’t so sure anymore.

 

* * *

 

Sol 183  
Mission Log #234

Seems like the storms have been growing shorter and less violent these days. The Hab doesn’t shake as much, at least, but I don’t know how reliable that is for measuring wind strength. Luckily, we have Yahaba, who, along with studying the wonderful world of plants in college also apparently studied weather patterns? Maybe that should be the other way around, since his first major was in atmospheric sciences and he just happened to decide that tacking on a botany minor was a good idea.

Regardless, he’s now our resident weather man, and he thinks the storm season is finally passing. Good enough for me. I’m anxious to get these plants in Carystus soil. The sooner we can plant, the sooner we can tell the scientists back on Earth to send the next batch of astronauts. So long as these crops actually succeed.

On a side note: we’ve now lived in the Hab for almost half of a year!

Well, a Carystus year that is, since it’s on a 468 day orbit. If we’re counting Earth days, we’re closer to half a year. Just past half a year, actually, if we take Carystus’s longer days into account and add all the extra, accumulated hours into 24-hour days and blah blah blah. Point is, it’s been somewhere around 270-something Earth days or so for us since our original launch, and that means it’s holiday season! And of course, we Hab boys are going to celebrate in style. (Read: with shitty holiday decorations Futakuchi smuggled into our payload because he loves holiday season way too much.)

Well, it’s not every day you get to celebrate Christmas on a different planet. I guess it’ll be fun, but I don’t know. It’ll be the first Christmas in six or seven years that Hajime and I won’t spend together. It’s a little weird…

I’ll just have to get used to it, I suppose.

 

* * *

 

There are six crew members for the Mikaboshi I flight including Tooru, who accepts his assignment as Payload Commander with at least some degree of alacrity. It ranks him third in the crew, after the Commander and Pilot, but it’s the highest assignment he’s ever been given, and the highest assignment he could ever expect to be given considering how both Pilot and Commander are roles typically reserved for astronauts with years and years of flight experience, and Tooru’s never really been interested in that track of work. It’s a balm of sorts for his frazzled thoughts, though not enough to keep him from questioning his place in the crew. And Hajime’s absence.

He meets the rest of his crew about a week after confronting Ukai, sitting around a table in one of the small conference rooms of JAXA’s main building. He already knows their faces and names, has already worked with most of them on previous missions or Earth-bound assignments, but now he looks at all of them with new eyes. His crew. His only companions for the next six years.

Tooru prays that time passes quickly.

Kuroo lounges back in his chair with his feet crossed atop the table, hands linked behind his head, looking as usual like he has not a care or concern in this world. He doesn’t talk much, having called this meeting for no other reason than for all of them to meet each other, but then Tooru doesn’t expect him to. Kuroo’s always been the quiet one in mission meetings like this. And Bokuto, sitting beside him, fills Kuroo’s silence with endless chatter about how excited he is and how much he’s looking forward to this and how they’ll be the first ones to stand on a planet outside their own solar system, isn’t that cool? Isn’t that totally rad?

Tooru tries not to listen. Tries not to think about how he was saying the exact same things to Hajime just a little over a week ago.

The other three members of his team also seem to be ignoring Bokuto’s enthusiasm, with varying degrees of success. The only person, aside from Kuroo, who even _looks_ like he’s paying attention to the mindless chatter is Yahaba, but from the glaze in his eyes and the constant clenching and unclenching of his fists on top of the table, it’s obvious Yahaba’s usual respect for authority is being severely tested by the situation at hand. Most likely made worse by Futakuchi’s goading comments and quiet snickers. Tooru privately wonders if all environmental biologists are like this, or if it’s just Futakuchi’s personal brand of irritating.

Probably the latter, Tooru decides, watching a small twitch appear at the corner of Yahaba’s right eye. But at least he’ll keep things interesting during the trip. If the crew doesn’t decide to just kill him by the time they reach Jupiter, that is.

Maybe that’s why the higher ups chose Akaashi to be their Flight Engineer, instead of someone more outspoken like Nishinoya or Yaku. Maybe they hope his quiet nature will balance out the rest of their more volatile personalities. Tooru thinks it’s a pointless hope.

As does Akaashi, judging by his body posture. He sits beside Bokuto, avoiding the pilot’s violently waving hands, and just stares at the ceiling with empty eyes, looking for all the world like he’d rather be anywhere else except here, in this room, with this team. And Tooru can sympathize, because truthfully he’s not sure he wants to be here either. Not because of the team itself, but because of that gap Tooru still senses while facing the members of his crew. That little hint of gravity they’re missing which would pull them all together.

Because it’s a good team, Tooru will admit. Well-matched. Well-balanced. Perfect for what JAXA wants them to do.

And yet, to Tooru, it still feels all wrong.

 

* * *

 

“You should be on my crew!” Tooru complains to Hajime, who stands in their kitchen with his back towards Tooru chopping vegetables. It feels like the millionth time Tooru’s said this since they got their letters. In reality, it’s probably the billionth or more. He knows himself well enough to be aware of this, though he also never argues this much about something unless he truly believes he’s right. “We’ve always worked together. Always. Even during training. Splitting us up now just isn’t fair.”

Hajime, as usual, ignores the outburst and continues chopping. The quick, dull clack of the knife against a plastic cutting board fills the kitchen in a steady rhythm. Not flustered at all. “JAXA isn’t looking at what’s fair. They’re looking at what’s best for the overall mission,” Hajime points out.

“If that were true, they would have put you as our pilot.”

“You’re being stubborn,” Hajime argues. “We both know Bokuto’s a better pilot than I am. And he works better with your Commander than I do too. He’s the best choice for this mission.” There’s a pause in his words as he tips what he was chopping into a pan on the stove. It sizzles and pops for a moment, filling the kitchen with the scent of onions and garlic, then gets replaced with the knife’s clacking as Hajime starts chopping once more. “There’s nothing we can do about it anyway. This is JAXA’s decision.”

“Not entirely,” Tooru retorts. He taps his fingers together, then flattens his hands against his thighs. “I could drop out.”

There’s a falter in Hajime’s steady rhythm. Just the slightest pause, so brief that no one aside from Tooru would be able to pick it out. But Hajime doesn’t stop, and he doesn’t turn around. “Don’t be stupid.”

“Is it stupid to want to stay with you?”

“Don’t you dare fuck up this mission’s success for something so selfish. They need you, Tooru.”

“So that’s it? You’re just going to accept that?” Tooru’s hands curl into fists in his lap, underneath the counter where Hajime can’t see them even if he turns around. Which is just as well, since they start shaking from the effort it takes not to just vault over the counter and knock some much-needed sense into Hajime. He lets his nails dig painful crescent moons into his palms and glares at Hajime’s back. “You don’t have any problem with this at all? You’re fine with being separated?”

“We’ve been separated before-”

“But not for six years!”

There’s one more clack, and then the kitchen is silent.

Hajime sets down his knife. He bows his head, shoulders tense beneath the fabric of his dark grey button-up, and takes a deep breath. And for once Tooru thinks his words have gotten through to Hajime. All his thoughts, hesitations, worries. But then when Hajime turns around, his expression is just as composed and determined as ever. And Tooru can’t take it.

“Tooru,” Hajime sighs as Tooru stands from his stool and walks out of the kitchen. But Tooru doesn’t stop. He doesn’t want to hear Hajime’s arguments anymore. Can’t stand his professional, detached tone. Tooru crosses the room to the spiral staircase leading to their rooftop, where Tooru hides himself amongst his plants.

The roof is small, made smaller by the overflow of flowers and greenery all around the edges. There aren’t many places for him to hide, but it doesn’t matter. Hajime won’t dare follow him up here. Not with how upset Tooru obviously is. The rooftop is his sanctuary. His holy ground. And Hajime knows very well he’s not welcome here unless invited up. It’s the one promise Tooru knows will never change, will never be broken, even if all the others are.

Tooru sits in the corner of the roof, where he can curl up between the green and red of the Japanese Andromeda and Viburnum tinus, and pulls his knees to his chest. All around, the sounds of life waft up from the city below. Cars passing, crowds walking, planes passing overhead. Tooru presses his forehead against his bent knees and takes it all in. He focuses on the sound, on the cloying scent of flowers on either side of him, on the cool touch of wind against his bare arms, and he tries not to think.

 

* * *

 

At the end of their second year in JAXA’s training program, they receive their first missions. Just up to the International Space Station for a few weeks to get a taste of actual space travel, but it’s exciting enough to leave the students talking for a few weeks until the crews are posted.

It’s the first time Tooru’s seen everyone arrive at the training facility on time in the two years he’s been here. Even Kuroo’s on time and crowding himself in front of the mission board with everyone else, dark hair sticking up every which way over the heads of everyone else. He probably didn’t have time to attempt taming his bed-head in his rush to see their crews.

Tooru has a nice spot near the front of the crowd, where he can easily see the board. It’s still blank for the moment, but it can’t be long now. Just a few more minutes, once the clock above the board ticks its way to 0800, and then they’ll know for sure. Who will be launched space-side, and who will remain on the ground to await their turn.

There’s no way Tooru won’t be chosen for the first launch. Not after the score he and Hajime wracked up in the flight simulator the other day. And he just got clearance for a new experiment from the JAXA botany lab which would require a couple of weeks of testing in a zero-gravity environment. Granted that aspect of the experiment can wait a bit if Tooru isn’t chosen, but surely getting clearance now is a good sign, right?

Tooru thinks so. He hopes so.

He glances back up at the clock. Only a minute left to go until the crews are posted. Awareness sparks through the gathered crowd, and anticipation grows to palpable levels, so thick it could be compared to the density of 55 Cancri e. Tooru’s no different though. He’s also anxious to know his launch date and, far more importantly, his crew members.

A few more seconds. Just a few more.

A gasp goes up as the mission boards flicker to life. Bright white fades into existence behind the glass, then black text scrolls down the screens to fill list after list with names. ISS Missions One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six. And at the beginning of each list, their approximate launch dates.

Tooru, like the rest of the crowd, surges toward the screens to find his name. He scans each list, one after another, starting from the bottom, until he finds his name sitting right in the middle of the first mission’s crew, just as he’d been hoping. He recognizes the names of the rest of the crew from various classes and training exercises, but no one he’s particularly close to. All except for…

“Iwa-chan!” he calls out, looking frantically over the sea of people for a specific head of dark, spiky hair. It’s hard to pick him out from the rest of the crowd, but Tooru eventually finds him standing near the back of the crowd, signature scowl pulling at his lips, and Tooru waves. “Iwa-chan! We’re on the same mission crew! Mission One!”

Hajime wrinkles his nose and yells back, “Stop using that stupid nickname, dumbass!” However, there’s a tiny twitch in his right cheek that betrays the smile he’s trying to hold back. It’s not hard to see he’s pleased.

Honestly, Tooru’s relieved. He likes the other members of the program well enough, and they all seem to at least tolerate him and his need for perfection, but none so well as Hajime, who takes all of Tooru’s eccentricities in stride. Knowing Hajime will be with him, keeping him in line and focused, eases something inside Tooru he didn’t know existed.

He thinks of the two months they’ll spend on the space station, floating among the stars Tooru’s always admired, and he beams at Hajime. “Let’s work well together! I’m counting on you, Iwa-chan!”

“Yeah,” Hajime answers. “I’m counting on you too, Oikawa.”

 

* * *

 

Tooru finds little brown spots on the leaves of the new sprouts and immediately knows they’re in trouble. He doesn’t know why they’re in trouble, but they are, and it rankles Tooru’s nerves to realize transferring crops into pure Carystus soil and atmosphere won’t be as simple as he’d been hoping it would be.

Just a few days since sprouting, and already the test crops are dying. Drying out? Lacking nutrients? Ravaged by some sort of native plant disease? Tooru doesn’t know yet. There’s no way to tell from a single glance. Tooru squats down and rubs a leaf between two of his fingers. It crackles and flakes away beneath his thumb, and when Tooru lets go the entire sprout flops over onto the ground, tiny stem nearly bent in half. Maybe it’s a moisture thing? Or is the sunlight too strong when not diluted by the greenhouse tarps? Did it dry the plants out?

He sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose with his left hand. There are far too many possibilities for Tooru to even try and guess what went wrong. He’ll need to sample the plants. Do some tests, make some observations, maybe run a few more trials. Hours and weeks and months of work and frustration. Then maybe, if he’s lucky, he’ll have an idea of what’s happening, and what he needs to fix.

“A few of the sprouts near the back are still fine,” Yahaba informs him, surveying the field, “but for the most part this batch is a bust.”

Tooru takes a deep breath, then looks out over the plot of dirt they’d prepared for this first test. He’s inclined to agree with Yahaba’s opinion. The dying sprouts won’t last much longer as they are, and until they know what’s causing the plants to fail there isn’t much either he or Yahaba can do to save them. As much as he hates to admit it, Tooru’s plants have lost. This victory must go to the rock-covered planet they’re battling against.

“We’ll dig them up,” Tooru decides, “and conduct tests. See what we did wrong.”

He pushes himself up and stands with hands on his hips, looking off into the distance. In his mind, he sees wild grasses rippling in seas of green and gold beneath the cool breeze, and green clouds across the horizon where trees have sprung up, all lush and tall and full of life. Tooru blinks, and the image is gone. All he can see is miles and miles of barren, brown land scattered with grey rocks. Void of life. Empty.

Tooru turns his back on the scene and walks toward the greenhouse to grab supplies. The sooner they dig these plants up, the sooner they can test them and find an answer, even if he has to lose sleep to get there. They have a limited time frame to get these crops going after all, and Tooru is nothing if not determined.

He’ll make that image in his mind a reality some way or another. Before the next mission crew arrives.

 

* * *

 

Sol 221  
Mission Log #272

Plants are dead. Not really sure why just yet, but we’ll get there.

Yahaba and I are starting testing on the sprouts tomorrow. We’ll need to go over soil samples again and compare them to the mixed Earth-Carystus soil we used in the greenhouse, just to make sure we aren’t missing out on anything. I don’t think it’s the ground though. I think it’s something in the atmosphere. Or something connected to sun exposure. Because the plants were growing just fine until they sprouted up, and that’s when they started to die. There’s just something in the atmosphere that’s killing them. Something we need to fix.

Nothing else to report, really. Bokuto, Futakuchi, and Kuroo are having some kind of dance party in the Hab’s mess hall. At least they’re enjoying themselves.

I envy them. I really, really do.

 

* * *

 

“Adjusting by two degrees,” Bokuto says over the flight simulator’s intercom. His voice sounds like one of those old radios from decades long ago, all crackling and distant and broken, because the simulator itself is a thing from the past. Tooru knows it hasn’t been replaced since the days of the first Mars landing missions, with only minimal changes made to the interior to keep it up to date with the changing instrumentation and keep it accurate to the space crafts being launched into space.

The simulator tilts up just slightly as Bokuto shifts its course, and some muffled muttering, too quiet to be heard clearly through the speakers, fills the quiet of the control room where Tooru’s holding camp with Sawamura Daichi, their backup flight director. Probably some double checking on angles with Kuroo before starting the docking procedure. Tooru can’t see them through the shell of the simulator, but he imagines the two of them with heads pressed together, Bokuto’s tongue sticking out in concentration while they both assess their position, and Akaashi sitting to their right with his hand hovering over the control panel, just waiting for the all clear to begin procedures.

Tooru doesn’t envy their positions. Or the amount of pressure that falls on their shoulders because of it.

“Alright, I’m docking,” Bokuto announces after another moment. Kuroo and Akaashi chime in not long after to confirm the action.

Tooru crosses his arms and looks up to watch the progression of the simulated craft on the control room’s screen as it creeps inch by careful inch towards the simulated docking point of their command module— the light-speed capable machine that would carry them through space to the Alpha Centauri system. Small beeps start when the craft is in docking range, growing faster as the craft gets closer, until there’s no space left between the simulated craft and the docking point and the beeping stops. A successful exercise without any mishaps.

“Good job, boys,” Daichi tells them over the intercom. “Why don’t you take a break before we try anymore?”

“Actually, can we repeat the exercise one more time?” Bokuto asks. Behind his voice, Tooru can just barely make out the resigned sighs of his other two crew mates. He can’t blame them. He wants to sigh himself, and he’s not even taking part in the training exercise.

“Again, Bokuto?” he asks, exasperated.

“The approach was too slow. I can do better!” The words crackled over the speakers in an earnest rush, and this, Tooru knows, this need for perfection in every situation that’s so similar to Tooru’s own, is why Bokuto was chosen as their flight’s pilot in the first place. And Tooru can’t help but grimace.

“You’ve flown this simulation a million times now, Bokuto. And every time is a success. Just give it a break.”

“Just one more time,” Bokuto pleads. There’s a whiny edge to his voice. One that usually means he’ll soon be begging with puppy dog eyes and a broken-hearted chant of please, please, please until the rest of them, weak as they are, finally break and give him his way. He’s so desperate to get this exercise right.

There’s a bit of shuffling, a bit of hurried mumbling, and then finally a soft sigh. “We’ll practice one more time, Sawamura-san,” Akaashi says. He’s giving way to Bokuto’s request, but even Tooru can hear the finality in his tone that says this is truly the last time for them. The last shot to get this right before moving on. So unyielding even Bokuto can’t protest. “Coincidentally,” Akaashi continues, seeming almost bemused now, “why are you here, Oikawa-san? I thought this was your day off?”

Tooru tosses his head and sniffs indignantly. “Now how could I let my poor crew mates spend all day training while I just sit at home? What kind of guy do you take me for?”

He doesn’t bother to mention that if things were as they should be, he wouldn’t be here at all. If this mission had turned out as he had planned, if they had been placed on a crew together instead of being separated. If he and Hajime hadn’t been forced into an argument…

Tooru shakes his head. No use thinking about it right now, when there’s nothing he can do to change it. He looks back at the control room’s screen, where the simulation has already been reloaded for Kuroo, Bokuto, and Akaashi and focuses on their steady progress. Watches how Bokuto guides the simulated craft with more confidence, more finesse, and tries not to think of what Hajime would do if he was in Bokuto’s place.

Beside him, Daichi flips a few switches, surprising Bokuto with new obstacles to navigate, and then leans back in his swivel chair. He folds his hands together atop his chest and glances at Tooru from the corners of his eyes, which Tooru pretends not to notice. He also pretends not to notice the way Daichi’s lips pinch together, or how his brows pull together to form lines of worry across his forehead.

“Akaashi has a point, you know,” Daichi says softly. Tooru would label his statement as hesitant if not for the confident set of Daichi’s shoulders, and the calm way he turns his gaze back to the screen as he adds, “You’re supposed to be resting at home. Taking care of those bags under your eyes.”

Tooru forces a bright smile across his face and tilts his head to the side. “Ah, Dai-chan. You of all people know that Oikawa and resting are two things that don’t go well together.”

“I do. Which is why I have Iwaizumi on speed dial.” He pushes back from the controls and spins in his chair, just enough so he can face Tooru head on instead of glancing to the side. A finger taps against his chest, and he tilts his head to the side. “So what did you do this time?”

“I’m offended that you think _I’m_ at fault here.”

“Well Iwaizumi’s a saint, so it has to be you.”

Tooru scowls and refuses to dignify that with a response.

He’s not at fault here. He didn’t do anything wrong, and technically neither did Hajime. If Tooru had to place blame on anyone, he’d place it on those bastards that split the two of them into different Mikaboshi crews. None of this would be happening if they’d just let Tooru switch into Hajime’s crew, or vice versa. Just as long as they weren’t separated.

Wrinkling his nose, Tooru averts his gaze and stares at his reflection in the shiny, silver control panel beside him. The image is all warped, face shape more resembling an hourglass than the oval Tooru knows it to be. But even with cheeks pinched in and eyes stretched slightly farther apart than they really should be, he can still make out the dark, heavy bags beneath his eyes. The exhausted droop of his hair. The small creases from where his brows had pinched together in worry all through the night while lying in their bed as silent and as far away from Hajime as possible.

How many nights had it been since he was able to sleep through the night properly? How many days since they’d last spoken more than a few curt words to one another?

He’s so tired. Exhaustion clings to his limbs like a heavy quilt, calling him to the peaceful oblivion of sleep Tooru just can’t seem to find anymore. Every time he closes his eyes, he’s returned to that evening in the kitchen. Back to their fight. He can only see Hajime’s blank face. Can only remember his detached tone, his easy acceptance, his complete lack of emotion in the face of their separation.

Did Hajime even care anymore? Was Tooru so easy to let go of?

“Say, Dai-chan,” he asks into the quiet, over the tiny beeps and humming of the simulator, “you’re in a relationship, right?” Tooru doesn’t wait for Daichi’s confirmation, already knowing the gossip he’d heard about Daichi and that silver-haired kindergarten teacher is accurate, but pushes right ahead to ask, “What if, hypothetically, you two were forced to move to opposite ends of the world and couldn’t see each other for several years? And what if, when you found this out, your partner was just kind of… nonchalant about it? Like they weren’t bothered at all?”

Tooru fiddles with his fingers and keeps his eyes glued to the ground. He knows he’s being pretty obvious. Only someone truly stupid would miss the connection between the hypothetical situation and Tooru’s own, and Daichi is far from stupid.

It’s the first time Tooru’s mentioned the strife between himself and Hajime to anyone. Not even Takahiro and Issei, arguably their closest friends, know about the fight, unless Hajime talked to them about it. It’s a little strange, if he’s honest. Not because he and Daichi don’t know each other very well, because after several years of working together they definitely do, but because Tooru’s not used to talking about these issues with anyone besides Hajime. They usually settle their issues with each on their own before it can reach the point of needing outside advice. So this whole thing is not what Tooru’s used to at all.

Daichi also seems surprised by the confession. And why wouldn’t he be? It’s not like Tooru or Hajime ever brought their issues to Daichi before this, except in the form of petty complaints once the issue had already been solved. They’ve never asked for his advice before either. Especially Tooru, who always preferred figuring things out on his own to admitting his own weaknesses. He still does, but truthfully he’s at his wit’s end.

As much as it grates him to admit it, Tooru needs help with this. He _really_ needs help.

There’s silence in the room as Daichi considers him, broken only by the simulation’s beeps. Tooru can feel the weight of Daichi’s gaze like bags of sand hanging from his shoulders, and he still can’t bring himself to look at Daichi. He can’t. _He can’t._

There’s a sigh from Daichi. Then, “If it was me, I’d probably end the relationship.”

The words hit Tooru like a meteor, leaving his thoughts reeling. End the relationship? Break up with Hajime? Is that something he should be considering? Because, despite all the strife and tense silences and doubts, that’s something Tooru never even _thought_ of. He’s not even sure he wants to think about it. Just letting the idea float through his mind causes his chest to squeeze up and make it hard to breathe, and he really doesn’t think he can do that. He’ll fight tooth and nail to keep Hajime, even drop the program and all of his dreams if that’s what it takes to stay by Hajime’s side. As long as he doesn’t lose Hajime.

“Tooru,” Daichi says earnestly, pulling him from his thoughts before he self-destructs, “don’t misunderstand. My relationship is at a completely different stage than yours is. I just started dating him, we barely know each other, and I’m not sure we could weather something long-distance like that. But you and Iwaizumi are different.” Tooru’s chest loosens at this. Finally, he looks over at Daichi and sees a gentle, understanding smile. “If you really want this relationship, I have no doubt you’ll make it work. I’m sure Iwaizumi thinks the same way. Just talk to him about it. Don’t decide things on your own.”

And Tooru just nods because Daichi’s right. Of course he’s right. Tooru’s just being an idiot thinking about all this and working himself up without even talking to Hajime. Isn’t that what they do? Discuss problems and work together to find a solution? Why should this be any different?

The beeping of the simulator speeds up as Bokuto once again approaches his target. Tooru lifts his head to watch him navigate on the screen and confidently move through the docking procedures. This time, he pulls the attempt off perfectly.

 

* * *

 

“Is this seat taken?” a deep voice asks.

Tooru snaps his head up, both surprised to be addressed and eager to meet a fellow astronaut cadet, and finds the breath stolen right from his lungs. The other male stares down at him with bright, hazel eyes behind strong eyebrows and wayward strands of feathery black hair that sticks up in all directions. It’s a piercing stare, made even more disconcerting by the stiff but confident set of the rest of his features that says he knows exactly what he’s about, even if the rest of the world doesn’t. It’s the exact kind of determination and self-assurance Tooru’s always wanted but never quite possessed.

“No,” he manages to choke out in answer to the guy’s question. “No, it’s free.”

The guy quirks a tiny smile at him and drops into the seat. Heavily, like a rock. Making it clear he’s there to stay. He lifts the strap of his shoulder bag over his head to set the bag on the floor beside his chair, and Tooru’s gaze is drawn to the shifting muscles of the guy’s dark arms. The muscle definition is incredible. Even at rest, the guy’s arms show more muscle than Tooru’s arms at full flex ever would, and while that really intimidates Tooru, it also makes him incredibly curious. What sort of guy is he? How did he get here?

“I’m Oikawa Tooru,” he introduces himself to break the ice, and holds out a hand for the guy to shake. “I’m part of the botany section.”

The guy looks at his hand for a moment before slowly stretching out his own. His grip is firm, strong, confident, and nearly crushes Tooru’s hand. But Tooru finds he doesn’t really mind. “Iwaizumi Hajime. Pilot.”

“Hoping to be a pilot?” Tooru amends for clarification.

He knows that’s what many of the people in the room are there for. At least half of them are engineering or physics graduates hoping to get a chance at flying a spacecraft. It’s the true position of glory in the space program. Pilots get all the fame and attention, particularly because mission commanders are almost always chosen from the pool of experienced pilots. Tooru’s not humble enough not to hope he’ll be the exception to that rule, but he’s well aware of where his talents lie. Which is to say in the opposite direction of the pilot, as a mission scientist.

Iwaizumi, however, shakes his head. “No. I’m a pilot,” he confirms. “Joined the Air Force after high school and got my education through that.”

“Wow,” Tooru breathes. No wonder he’s so fit. And to already have some piloting experience of sorts, to already be ahead of the majority of the other hopefuls; that’s kind of incredible, in Tooru’s opinion.

Their conversation is cut short when the classroom door slams open and a middle-aged man— presumably their instructor— walks to the center of the room, where everyone sitting at the circular table can see him. He sets an old-fashioned leather briefcase on the projection desk and looks around at them all. The buzz of conversation falls silent in deference to his position.

Oiwake Takuro looks just like every other professor Tooru’s had in school with his dark, slicked back hair and the widow’s peak pointing down to the deep wrinkles across his forehead, and he runs this first class of the space program just like a university might. He takes roll call and passes a syllabus around, then drones on and on about assignments and grades and policies that can all be found on the paper they’ve just been given. Tooru loses all interest in the matters being discussed once that syllabus is in his hand. He can read all the important details later. No need to deal with that right now.

Growing bored, he sighs and slumps over the table. He starts doodling around the margins of his syllabus with his blue ballpoint pen— little stars and asteroids and spaceships, and one tiny astronaut with a group of aliens on the surface of a rocky planet. Over the astronaut, he draws a little speech bubble in which he writes the words “take me to your leader”; an ironic shift from all the movies and TV shows about aliens on Earth, in Tooru’s opinion, and one that makes Tooru smile to himself. Imagine one day landing on a planet with sentient lifeforms and demanding to meet their leaders. Humans would become the fearsome aliens for once, instead of the other way around.

There’s an amused huff of breath beside him, so quiet Tooru almost doubts its existence at all. He doubts even more when he looks up to find Iwaizumi completely absorbed in whatever Oiwake is saying. But there’s a small twitch at the corner of his mouth, like he wants to smile but is holding himself back. Did Oiwake say something amusing? Or one of the other cadets perhaps? Tooru was watching some of the other cadets earlier, before Iwaizumi sat beside him, and he honestly wouldn’t put it past a few of them to joke around in class.

Tooru lightly taps his pen against the table and Iwaizumi’s gaze drifts from their instructor, meets Tooru’s gaze and holds it, sharp hazel boring straight through Tooru. The corner of Iwaizumi’s mouth twitches again. Amusement sparkles in his eyes. And it dawns on Tooru.

Iwaizumi is watching him.

Tooru sucks in a sharp breath and looks back down at his syllabus in an attempt to will away the embarrassed heat that wants to fill his cheeks. His blush isn’t exactly the most attractive thing, turning his face into a splotchy, bright red mess that he definitely doesn’t want this man with the arms of Thor to see. Or anyone else in the class, for that matter.

Iwaizumi is still watching him though. Tooru can feel his stare burning into the side of his face. He’s probably still sporting that stubborn not-smile too, or maybe that tiny grin he threw at Tooru when he first sat down. What does he look like when he smiled without restraint? Do his lips pull back to show flashing teeth and pink gums? Does his face crunch up and turn his eyes into tiny slivers of happiness? Does he beam at others like he’d swallowed some tiny, personal sun?

What would it feel like to be the one to cause such a smile?

Chewing on his bottom lip, Tooru places the tip of his pen in a blank space between two large planets and a cluster of stars. It glides smoothly over the paper as he quickly scrawls out _“lunch after this?”_ with all the anxiety of a teenager facing their first crush. When Tooru looks up again, Iwaizumi huffs out a impatient breath and turns his attention back to Oiwake, though a ghost of a smile still lingers at the corners of his lips.

Tooru takes this as a yes.

 

* * *

 

“What is this?” Hajime asks when he returns his lab that night, arms full of documents and reports he was no doubt going to use as a distraction from Tooru’s continued cold shoulder. Or at least that’s what Tooru thinks the plan was from the way Hajime’s clutching them to his chest, almost like a defensive shield.

He starts to take a hesitant step forward, then appears to think better about it and remains where he is. Instead, he looks over the spread Tooru’s spent all day preparing with wide eyes. The lit candles on the table and counters. The newly-mopped tile floors and gleaming stove. The bottle of Hajime’s favorite red wine on the table between two bowls of steaming ramen— the only dish Tooru can confidently cook without Hajime’s help, though Tooru privately wishes he could have cooked something slightly more romantic.

“Tooru, what is this?” Hajime asks again, but softer this time. A little breathless. And it almost makes Tooru want to cry because _god_ he’s missed that voice. He’s missed it so much.

“My apology,” Tooru answers. He folds his hands in front of him, fiddling with his fingers because he doesn’t know how else to deal with the nerves twisting and churning in the pit of his stomach.

He feels off-kilter. Unnaturally unsure of himself and his own words. It reminds him of the first time they had lunch together, back when they were both new cadets in the JAXA space program just trying to figure each other out. Except that they aren’t strangers now. And this isn’t their first fight. And Tooru knows the troubled distance between the two of them is something he put there himself, with his own two hands, like a complete idiot.

“I’m sorry,” he repeats, tongue tripping over the words in the same way a small child might stumble while learning to walk. Vulnerability has never been something easy to show, and it takes a few tries and several deep breaths for Tooru to explain, “I shouldn’t have cut you off. I was just so mad at… at everything, really. At JAXA. My crew. Myself. This whole situation. And then you were so calm about it all, like you didn’t even care, and that made it so much worse.”

“I was just trying to keep things in perspective.”

“I know,” Tooru admits. “I know you were. You always do.” He pulls nervously at his fingers and turns his head away, looking at the small, orange flames and melting wax of the candles. Little suns in the dark of the kitchen. Stars meant just for him and Hajime that won’t live past the night. Tooru lets out a shaky breath. “I’m scared. I don’t want to leave you behind.”

He doesn’t hear the footsteps approaching, but immediately melts into Hajime’s embrace when his strong, dark arms wrap around Tooru anyway. He knows Hajime too well to be surprised by the gesture. Comfort comes to Hajime as naturally as breathing, and the familiar security that Tooru finds in his embrace smooths his frazzled nerves. He drops his head onto Hajime’s shoulder and twines his arms around Hajime’s waist, never wanting to let go.

One of Hajime’s hands comes up to stroke through Tooru’s hair. “It’s only for a little bit, Tooru.”

“Six years,” Tooru corrects. “Six whole years. At the very least. With almost no communication.”

“We’ll figure it out.”

Tooru makes a sound of protest and pulls Hajime even closer, until there’s no space left between them at all. Maybe if Tooru holds him long enough, they’ll become inseparable. Then the mission crews won’t matter.

“What are you so afraid of, Tooru?” Hajime murmurs, rubbing soothing circles between Tooru’s shoulder blades. “Six years is a short time compared to all the years we’ll have together. This isn’t the end of us.”

“I know,” Tooru says. “I know, but sometimes it feels like it is. Like my going ahead of you will break us apart somehow.” His fingers curl into the stiff fabric of Hajime’s dress shirt, clutching at Hajime with all the fervor of someone about to lose something precious. As if by letting go Hajime will disappear from him, never to be found again. He shuts his eyes and tries to will that thought away. “I guess I just want you to want me to stay.”

Hajime sighs into his hair, warm breath blowing over Tooru’s scalp and ear. He sounds tired. Resigned even. It’s the first show of exhaustion he’s given since they found out they were on different mission crews, and it hits Tooru that maybe Hajime had been just as conflicted and worried over their separation as Tooru, but had just been hiding it all behind a brave face.

“Of course I want you to stay. How could I not?” he confesses. His hand gently scratches at Tooru’s scalp, then strokes down his neck and across his shoulders. Slowly, he and Hajime begin to sway. Just a gentle rocking from side to side as Hajime adds, “This is your dream though. And probably the only chance you’ll get. I can’t ask you to give that up for me.”

“I don’t want this dream if you’re not there.”

“I will be,” Hajime promises. “It’ll just take me a little longer to get there.”

Tooru laughs softly at that. He feels Hajime’s smile curve against the shell of his ear, and suddenly all of his worries feel lighter. Not gone or completely assuaged, but easier to carry. Easier to forget.

“We’ll be ok, Tooru. You’ll see,” Hajime tells him before pressing a kiss into his hair.

Tooru is inclined to agree.

 

* * *

 

Sol 485  
Mission Log #359

Yahaba and I replanted some crops outside of the greenhouse today. Not as many as the first time, just in case they fail again, but enough for us to see whether our modifications will work out or not. Likely we’ll need to make some more adjustments, so we’re continuing to grow the genetically modified plants inside the greenhouse as well where we can easily experiment, but the hope is that what we’ve already done will be enough. We have only five years to get this figured out, and still so much we need to do once the crops succeed.

At least the plants in the greenhouse are still doing well. As long as we have that, we’ll be fine. We just need to grow enough to continue to survive, if only just barely. But I won’t let it come to that if I can help it. I’m not considered the best botanist at JAXA for nothing!

I also really don’t have anything better to do except lay around and think. And right now, I really don’t want to do that.

 

* * *

 

Tooru spends his afternoons at home tending to his rooftop garden and baking in the sweltering air of early summer. Water falls from his plastic, teal watering can onto the plants lining the far edge of the rooftop. In this heat, the soil soaks it all up with greed, and Tooru really can’t expect otherwise. It’s one of those days without wind or shade, where the heat just sits over the city and Tooru just wants to melt onto the ground, or to lay around the house and do nothing at all. Everything seems a little bit slower today, a little more reluctant. Even the traffic passing on the street below sounds lazy, and the people seem to crawl along at a snail’s pace.

Tooru sets the watering can down and wipes away the sticky sweat beading at his forehead. “It’s so hot,” he whines, and purses his lips in a pout. Behind him, Hajime grunts in agreement from where he’s lying spread eagle on the floor.

“I don’t know why you wanted to come up here in the first place. We should’ve just stayed inside.”

“But Hajime, the plants! I can’t just leave them to die of thirst!”

Hajime grunts again. And when Tooru glances over his shoulder, he sees Hajime, skin already several shades darker from the summer sun, with a hand over his eyes to block out the sun. “Hurry it up. Shittykawa,” he says. The use of the old nickname makes Tooru smile. “I want air conditioning.”

“You can go back inside, you know,” Tooru counters, which only makes Hajime snort.

He won’t go back inside alone, and both of them know it. Especially with the launch only a few days away, and their time together rapidly drawing to a close. And if Tooru wants to waste his afternoon taking care of his plants, then Hajime will do the same, despite all of his half-hearted complaints.

Tooru sighs and traces a finger around the edge of a ceramic pot. He really should take these plants to the botany lab. They can’t stay here. God knows Hajime couldn’t keep them alive if his life depended on it, and it’s not like Tooru can just take them with him. They’ll be better off in the hands of his fellow botanists, even if he thinks Kageyama might kill them out of spite. He can’t bring himself to take them from the rooftop though. His little garden has always been his comfort and sanctuary, and emptying it of all his plants feels a little like tearing his own heart from his chest.

Maybe he should just leave them for Hajime to deal with. It’s not like he’ll be coming back. If they die under Hajime’s care, it’ll have no effect on Tooru’s future at all.

“What time are Makki and Mattsun coming over?” he asks, finally turning away from his plants.

“Not for a few hours. I think they want to take you out to a nightclub or something,” Hajime answers. And that was just like their friends, wanting to spend their last night together out on the town. Tooru isn’t surprised at all, but neither is he excited as he usually would be. He wonders why that is.

Hajime rolls his head to the side and peeks at Tooru from between his fingers. A small frown tugs at his lips. “We can stay home if you want.”

“No it’s fine,” Tooru says, shaking his head. “I won’t get many more chances for a night out.”

He doesn’t mention why, but it doesn’t matter. They both know. They’re both aware of the upcoming launch date and the six years of separation they’ll have to endure. Tooru is even more aware of how little time he has left on this planet, with all he’s come to love. The places. The people. All of his friends and family.

Tooru looks at the city scape off in the distance, running a hand through his windswept hair. He understands now the hesitation Hajime had shown when they’d first talked of applying to the mission. Just knowing he’ll be saying goodbye to two of his closest friends tonight leaves a hollow sort of space inside him. He’s not really sure he likes it.

Did he make the right decision? Is this truly what he wants?

Hajime stands up and pulls Tooru into a hug, arms snug around Tooru’s waist and chin hooked over his shoulder. He’s just as sweaty as Tooru, maybe even more so, with perspiration dripping down his bare arms and soaking into the back of his cotton tank, and the heat radiating off him makes Tooru feel even more prickly and lethargic than he already is, but Tooru doesn’t complain. He savors the moment, like a flower soaking in the sun, and tucks it away in the back of his mind for the years to come.

He really must be an idiot to be giving this up. Truly. The absolute worst.

“Tooru,” Hajime whispers into his ear. His fingers slip beneath Tooru’s shirt and fan over the heated skin of his lower back. “Leave the plants. Let’s go inside.”

Tooru just nods and lets Hajime pull him inside, back to their bedroom where the air conditioning blasts just enough to take the edge off the heat as he and Hajime tumble together into their bed. He stretches out over the cool, white sheets. Hajime crawls over him and just stares. His fingers ghost over Tooru’s face, from brow to cheek to jaw, as if memorizing every bump and angle of his skin while he still can. Counting every eyelash. Every small crack in Tooru’s lips.

Tooru swallows thickly. His fingers curl in the hem of Hajime’s shirt, unwilling to ever let go, even while the soft ticking of the clock on the nightstand counts away their time. He doesn’t want to give this up. Doesn’t want to say goodbye, even for a day. If only he could stop time right here, on this hot summer’s day with Hajime by his side and nothing to worry about except the scorching sun and the sweat on his skin and the slightly broken air conditioning that only barely keeps the heat at bay.

He doesn’t want to give this up. Refuses to even think about anything beyond this moment and these sensations. Drowns himself in every second like a man dying of thirst. And when Hajime leans down to press their foreheads together, Tooru knows he’s doing the same.

 

* * *

 

“You’re _still_ working?” Bokuto exclaims. He’s practically falling over the table Tooru’s claimed in the large living area of the Hab and getting completely in Tooru’s way, with his arms stretched over the entire table, save for the corner where Tooru’s set his cactus plant for the night. Annoyed, Tooru turns a glare on the pilot, but Bokuto’s puppy-dog expression tells Tooru that he just doesn’t care about all the trouble he’s causing. Or maybe he doesn’t realize. Tooru can never really tell with him. “It’s night time. You need to take a break.”

“I have things to do, Bokuto. These plants aren’t going to grow themselves,” Tooru argues.

In a way that’s a lie. The plants _will_ grow without Tooru’s help, so long as they get planted in the ground. But whether they’ll survive without the research he and Yahaba have been doing is the bigger question, and one Tooru wants to be fully prepared for. He’ll work through the night if that’s what it takes to make the crops survive. Particularly with what appears to be another storm season closing in on them. Tooru’s not quite sure the crops they’ve already planted will be able to withstand the wind force this time around; he needs to find some way to make them more durable. Or more adaptable. Anything.

Bokuto softly whines and arches over Tooru’s table like a frightened cat, hands holding onto the edge closest to Tooru so his arms obscure all of Tooru’s research and samples from view. He bows his head, and the tips of his bleached hair brush over the graphs Tooru’s so meticulously been studying. Tooru is left to stare at the thick band of black hair that stretches from Bokuto’s roots halfway up his erratic hair instead.

Is Bokuto doing this on purpose? Tooru thinks he’s doing it on purpose. There’s no way he doesn’t realize just where he’s placing his limbs, or how it’s affecting Tooru’s work. It’s just too convenient.

“You work all the time,” Bokuto complains. “Even Keiji’s taking a break.”

Tooru glances across the room and sees that Bokuto’s telling the truth. Akaashi has finally emerged from that nest of wires and computer screens that he calls his work space in order to quietly lounge between Kuroo and an empty chair Tooru assumes belongs to Bokuto. He doesn’t see Futakuchi or Yahaba, but then Tooru doesn’t really expect to. Futakchi, he knows, is using his free time to catch up on all the messages he’s received from back home that he hasn’t been able to read due to their busy schedule. And then it’s common knowledge in the crew that Yahaba prefers to turn in early— healthy habits and all that, though Tooru’s not sure it makes much of a difference. They get so much sunlight on Carystus that sleeping in a little won’t hurt.

But that just leaves Kuroo, Bokuto, and Akaashi available. And, as much as Tooru likes them each individually, he’s not really keen on having a pow-wow with all three of them at once.

There’s a weird sort of dynamic there that Tooru can’t quite grasp. Not that it bothers him. It’s actually kind of nice how Bokuto’s crazy personality keeps both Kuroo and Akaashi from becoming too serious or morose, while both of them try their utmost to keep Bokuto’s head out of the clouds. Especially that second bit. Bokuto’s enthusiasm is simply exhausting when left unchecked, in a bone-deep, soul-deep kind of way that takes days of complete silence to recover from. Which none of them can really afford.

Having the three of them together on a mission is nice, and works with the efficiency of a well-oiled machine. It’s just that being around them, just the three of them, when not on an expedition always leaves Tooru bumbling around like some sort of fourth wheel. Which, in turn, reminds him that he’s actually alone here. That he doesn’t have that sort of partnership to rely on. Or even the comfortable bickering that Yahaba and Futakuchi share after so many JAXA classes and assignments together. He’s the odd man out here. Surrounded by the rest of his crew, sure, but still all alone.

Kuroo’s mouth is moving, relaying something or another to Akaashi with a fond tilt at the corner of his lips. Akaashi smiles and nods. He’s totally relaxed for once, and slowly leaning closer and closer to Kuroo as they talk without even seeming to realize it. Comfortable. Familiar in each other’s company.

Something painful tugs at Tooru’s heart. The sharpness throbs through his chest until he finally looks away from the two and back at the papers Bokuto’s still obscuring.

“I need to get this done, Bokuto,” he says, attempting to nudge Bokuto’s arms off the table. Or at least far enough to the side that Tooru can return to his work. “We have plenty of years to use for hanging out, and very limited time to get these crops growing.”

Bokuto pouts at him in response. Tooru doesn’t really understand how someone with biceps twice the size of Tooru’s own can look so small and helpless, but somehow Bokuto manages to make it work. Sadly for him, Tooru himself is well-versed in manipulating emotions to get what he wants, so the wide eyes and quivering lip do nothing to change his mind.

“Maybe next time,” Tooru says, and halfway means it. As long as either Yahaba or Futakuchi are there to suffer along with him.

Bokuto sighs and pushes himself up from the table. “Suit yourself,” he replies. “I dunno how you keep working all the time, but I won’t stop you. Just don’t overwork yourself, yeah? Thinking too much will fry your brain.”

Tooru doesn’t give an answer. He shoos Bokuto away and watches him rejoin Kuroo and Akaashi on the other side of the room. They joke and laugh, not loud enough for Tooru to hear, but he still feels himself pulled toward them. There’s a longing in his chest so strong that he finds it difficult to return to work, even with Bokuto no longer in his way. Not for his three crew members specifically, but for the camaraderie. The closeness.

Tooru longs for dark, spiky hair and hazel eyes. For nights spent on wooden floors, staring up at the artificial stars on their ceiling, and mornings spent dancing around each other in their complicated but well-practiced routine. For afternoons in the heart of Tsukuba with friends, and weekends spent in Miyagi with family. And for everything Tooru left about four light years away.

Maybe Bokuto’s right. Maybe Tooru does need a break.

He leans back in his chair and looks over all the papers strewn across it. The petri dishes and microscope slides on one side, his potted cactus sitting on the other side. “What do you think, Iwa-chan?” he asks quietly. “Think I should stop for the night?”

A stupid question, really. He doesn’t need the cactus to talk in order to know what the answer would be. The chastisement that would fall from Hajime’s lips if he saw what Tooru was doing. And that only makes the longing in his chest more painful.

Tooru looks away from the cactus and picks up his pen. He returns to his work.

 

* * *

 

Tooru’s welcomed home from the Mars mission like a sort of celebrity. At least among the biology and botany departments of JAXA’s headquarters.

He’s less excited by this than he thought he would be. His experiments on Mars were a resounding success, and helped to clear up some lingering questions about planting Earth crops in extraterrestrial soil that researchers had been struggling to answer since their first attempt at terraforming Mars almost a decade ago, so it makes sense to find himself hounded at all hours by fellow scientists and various plant-based scientific communities as soon as his feet were back on Earth soil. What Tooru didn’t expect, however, was how exhausted all the attention would make him feel. How absolutely burnt out.

He hasn’t left the lab in several days. Three? Maybe four? He can’t really remember. The time blurs together between reports and research and three-hour naps snatched on the ratty old couch in the employee lounge. How many cups of coffee has he consumed today? How long has it been since he last had food? Tooru can’t say. He’s lost track of it all. Of everything except the slides of Mars-grown fungi he’s supposed to be observing. Though he really doesn’t want to.

For the first time since university, research feels like a double-edged sword. He loves the work, the discoveries, and basks in the respect success brings to him, but he finds that every success also catapults him further into the spotlight, with all the responsibilities and pressure that come with it. He’s so weighed down by it all that it’s almost like he’s standing in the core of the Earth. Except instead of being transformed and refined into something precious, he’s just disintegrating piece by tiny piece.

He trips his way across the lab, muttering a constant stream of “fuck my life” as he searches for the notes and bottled solution he’s somehow managed to misplace within the last twenty minutes, and feels very close to just bursting into a million chunks of fleshy mess. Or combusting maybe. Being engulfed in a massive fireball doesn’t sound all too bad at the moment. At least he wouldn’t need to worry about making more earth-shattering discoveries. Or about the lecture he’s sure to receive from the lab supervisor if he can’t find that stupid bottle of solution.

Where is the damn thing? Tooru could have sworn he’d set it _right here._

The lab door slams open and Tooru drops the stack of paper he’d just picked up during his search in surprise. The pages scatter and flutter to the floor in complete disarray. A large, disconnected circle of white set against the lab’s blue tile floor all around his feet.

He tips his head back, eyes closed, and lets out a long breath. Just his luck really. Now he’ll need to pick up and sort through all the papers. And he’ll have to sort it meticulously, because, of course, the papers weren’t even his. They were someone else’s research. Someone else’s hard work that Tooru just scattered all over the floor.

“You’d better help me clean this up,” he says to the intruder. It was their fault things got this way in the first place. Tooru will be damned if he’s the only punished from this whole mess.

There’s a snort, and Tooru cracks one eye open to peek across the room. Hajime’s standing in the open doorway with his arms crossed, just staring at Tooru. One of his eyebrows is quirked, and his lips are pressed thin. Thoroughly unimpressed.

“How long have you been here?” he asks. Tooru doesn’t answer, both because he honestly can’t remember, and because he knows how Hajime will react if he said as much. He’s not really wanting another lecture today. The one he’ll get later for the missing solution is enough for him.

Instead of answering, he kneels down and starts gathering the papers he dropped into a neat pile. His silence is telling enough, and Hajime sighs. Footsteps echo off the tile floor. Hajime stops opposite of Tooru and drops down to the floor to pick up whatever Tooru can’t reach himself. Tooru looks up at him briefly, then turns his gaze back to the floor, feeling his chest tighten and warmth crawling up the back of his neck.

Hajime’s hair is still longer than usual, apparently untouched since they’d returned from their mission, with dark strands falling into his eyes and feathering across his nape. Tooru’s not used to the sight. Typically, Hajime keeps his hair close cut except while on missions. Military habit, most likely, though Tooru’s told him time and time again that longer hair suits him. Now Tooru curses whatever god it was that made Hajime listen to his advice, because the change is making it extremely difficult for Tooru to focus on what he’s doing. All he can think about is running his fingers through that hair and seeing if it’s as soft as it looks.

Would Hajime care if Tooru started petting him? Probably. Better not risk it.

Hajime hands him the paper he picked up and Tooru shuffles it all together into a single stack, keeping his eyes down for his own sanity. He feels Hajime’s stare boring into him. Taking in Tooru’s wrinkled clothes and abnormally pale skin and disheveled hair. “Did you even sleep last night?” he asks.

“Of course I did.”

“Liar,” Hajime mutters. Tooru almost jumps when the cool pad of Hajime’s index finger presses against his cheek, right under his eye. “These bags are so heavy you’d need a crane to lift them. It’s a wonder you’re even awake right now.”

“Sheer force of will and like a million cups of coffee,” Tooru admits, albeit reluctantly. He’s not surprised when Hajime tuts in disappointment. Nor when Hajime takes his arm and hauls him into a standing position, holding him in place as if afraid Tooru would tip over at any second. Which, Tooru has to concede, isn’t unfounded. It has happened before.

Hajime takes the papers from his hands and sets them on one of the lab tables. “Worry about them later,” he says when Tooru makes an affronted sort of noise. “We’re getting out of here for a bit.”

“I still have work to do,” Tooru protests. Hajime doesn’t listen to him and just tugs him toward the door, not even stopping to let Tooru change from his lab coat or properly put away his equipment. Anxiety squeezes his chest. He really hopes this break Hajime’s forcing on him won’t mess with his results. He really needs to get it right, because he really doesn’t want to explain to his lab supervisor how he somehow managed to ruin a simple analysis of space fungus.

There’s a pattering on the roof of the hallway Hajime drags him down. Tiny, repetitive thuds that remind Tooru of when squirrels would scamper across his roof back in Miyagi, except on a much larger scale here. A whole army of squirrels and other small creatures.

Tooru absentmindedly makes the connection between sound and reality just as Hajime tows him around the corner and into the lab’s lobby, where large, glass windows reveal an overcast sky and water drops pouring from the sky. _Rain_ , his brain supplies. The first storm of the summer season. And the first bit of rain he’s seen since the Mars launch over half a year ago. Mars had it’s own storms, of course, but all of them were made of wind and dust. No liquid to be found, and not even a hint of thunder to remind Tooru of home. Those dust storms were all Tooru had known in the last three months. He’d nearly forgotten what rain looked like.

Hajime lets go of him, but Tooru barely notices. He no longer needs to be dragged from the lab anyway. Instead he walks out all on his own, lab coat and all, until he’s standing on the sidewalk, free of the lab’s shelter, with arms outstretched to embrace the rain. It’s warmer than he was expecting, made even warmer when the sun briefly breaks through the cloud cover to wash over his skin. He wishes he could be in the middle of a field, where the scent of damp earth and sweet grass could surround him, but at least the concrete helps to amplify the rich, clean smell of ozone dropping into their atmosphere. It works as a balm on Tooru’s chaotic thoughts and slowly brings him back to a state of relaxation. No expectations. No frantic worries. Just sweet rain and water-soaked clothes sticking to his skin.

He’s pushed from behind and is sent stumbling into the empty street. Slicking back his wet hair, he glares over his shoulder, ready to lash out at Hajime for being so rude and ungentlemanly. How dare he push Tooru when he was just starting to enjoy the rain? But then Hajime flies past him with a giant leap and lands smack-dab in the middle of a large puddle, sending an impressive splash of water over both himself and Tooru.

“Iwa-chan!” Tooru whines, though it comes out half-sounding like a laugh as Hajime continues kicking water at him. Tooru covers his face with his arms. He hears Hajime snicker, and then gets pulled by the wrists further out into the road.

“Come on, Oikawa,” Hajime coaxes. “Let loose. Live a little.”

His fingers slip from around Tooru’s wrists to latch onto Tooru’s hands instead, and he spins the both of them around in a large, messy circle. Tooru laughs and just follows the momentum. Something light and warm bubbles up inside of him and fills his chest as Hajime keeps spinning and splashing him.

He can’t remember the last time he actually played in the rain. Maybe some time in high school, when his club had gotten rained out of their outside activities, but Tooru can’t say for sure. He likes this though. The simplicity of it. The easy fun that somehow makes it all the more magical, particularly because this isn’t something that can be found just anywhere. Dust storms and wind storms are exciting in their own way, but not really ideal for playing in. Not like rain. It’s an experience exclusive only to their planet. Only to home.

“You’re such a child,” Tooru says to Hajime, who just splashes him again in retaliation.

There’s a large smile sitting where Hajime’s usual scowl is found. Not the soft smile Tooru usually sees directed his way, but one far rarer. Hajime smiles without any reservation or restraint, so both his teeth and gums show while beneath the dark, wet fringe of hair plastered down his face his eyes are narrowed into tiny slits from the lift in his cheeks. There’s a light flush to his cheeks. From excitement or embarrassment, Tooru can’t say, but it colors Hajime’s face in a way that leaves Tooru almost gasping for breath.

He’s never seen Hajime so relaxed or at ease. He wants to see it every day of his life.

He _needs_ to see it every day of his life.

“Iwa-chan,” Tooru whispers, reaching up to frame Hajime’s face with his hands. There’s no real lead up to what he’s about to say. He doesn’t even really think about it, or about how Hajime will react. That really doesn’t matter to him. It just feels right in this moment to finally give voice to the emotions he’s been harboring for years, to the words he’s held onto for so long. “Hajime, I think I love you.”

Hajime’s smile turns soft, but now Tooru can see every ounce of affection and care in it that he’d only seen glimpses of before. His fingers skim up Tooru’s cheek, light as the rain trickling down his skin, as if afraid Tooru might break or disappear. As if Tooru is the most precious thing in the world. Then he cards his fingers through Tooru’s hair and draws him close so their foreheads are pressed against each other. Tooru feels his words like a summer breeze against his mouth.

“Me too.”

 

* * *

 

Sol 521  
Mission Log #371

The others are out exploring the planet today. Checking out some areas we haven’t yet been able to cover, including some large pools of standing water off to the east. Futakuchi’s all excited. He’s hoping they’ll find some sort of native fish or amphibian. I’ll admit that would be pretty cool.

I opted to stay behind today. The plants are doing better, but are still having some issues. They need a lot more work before I can even think about exploring, but at least I have everything I need right here with me. Plenty of time to see Carystus in the future. I just want to get this right.

The one bad thing about this: the Hab is way too quiet.

 

* * *

 

“All systems set. Communication is five for five,” Akaashi says. His voice is just a bit distorted through the speakers of Tooru’s helmet, but the words are clear and they send Tooru’s heart into overdrive. “We are ready for preflight checklist, Commander.”

“Copy,” Kuroo answers. He leans forward in his chair, reaching across Bokuto next to him to flip a switch. Tooru watches the lights of all the space craft’s systems blink, ready for use, and feels his stomach tighten. He places his gloved fingertips to his stomach, pressing into the buckle of the seatbelt harness and the material of his space suit, and takes a deep breath.

This is it. No turning back now.

Kuroo looks over the back of his Commander’s seat, between Bokuto and Akaashi at the front, and glances first at Futakuchi, then Yahaba, and then at him before turning back around for launch prep. His head turns towards Akaashi as he says, “CAPCOM.”

Akaashi nods. “Go.”

“Guidance.”

“Go,” Akaashi says again.

“Telemetry.”

“Go.”

“Pilot.”

“Go,” Bokuto says this time. He and Kuroo bump fists, then Kuroo faces front once more.

“Mission Control, this is _Mikaboshi I_. We are go for launch. T-minus three minutes, thirty seconds to launch.”

Tooru leans his head back and closes his eyes. Only three minutes until the engines kicked in. Three minutes until they leave the Tanegashima launch pad with the mind-numbing roar of a successful launch. Three minutes until lift off from Earth, never to return.

He tries not to think beyond that. Hajime, he knows, is standing in the mission control room back in Tsukuba with Ukai and Daichi and the rest of their team, watching the countdown to Tooru’s flight from the safety of Earth for the first time instead of sitting right there beside him. Tooru’s so used to having Hajime’s steady presence there beside him; having Yahaba fill the chair on his right throws him all off. That spot is reserved for Hajime. Anyone else there just doesn’t make sense.

“One minute,” Akaashi says.

He never ended up giving his plants away like he’d been planning. He hopes Hajime will be able to take care of them, or to find someone else that will. Just as long as he doesn’t throw them out or leave them on the street curb for someone else to find. Tooru doesn’t know if he could handle that sort of thing. Though it’s not like he’ll have any way of knowing. Especially once the ship gets up to light speed and sending messages becomes pretty much impossible.

Still, it ties his stomach in knots to think of all those plants he’s nurtured just left abandoned on the curb or in the dumpster. Like they never meant anything in the first place.

“T-minus ten,” Akaashi says, “nine… eight…”

“Main engines start,” Bokuto says, pulling down on one of the levers on the control panel.

“Seven… six… five…”

The engines slowly rumble to life. Tooru feels the rockets first, vibrations traveling beneath his feet and up through his chair as the ship quivers with pent up energy. Then the rumble crescendos and crashes over them. It fills his ears until he can barely hear Akaashi’s countdown through the speakers of his helmet. His hand curls tighter against his stomach.

“Four… three… two…”

The final number is lost in the roar. There’s a jolt, and then Tooru’s pressed back into his seat by the sheer force of the launch, like some giant, invisible hand was forcing him further and further into the cushion of the seat, and maybe trying to push his through the entire seat as a whole. His stomach seems to have gotten left behind at the launch pad, but that’s ok. He doesn’t really need it anyways, right? He’s more concerned by the frantic pounding of his heart against his ribcage, and the pressure on his chest that’s making it hard for him to breathe.

He’s relieved at least that he’s somehow managed to bring his heart along with him. Physically at least. There’s a hollowness inside his chest that has less to do with the actual organs and their presence, and more to do with what the organs care about. And in that case, Tooru knows his heart isn’t with him. It’s still back on Earth, safe in the hands of someone he won’t see again for another six years.

 


	2. Chapter 2

Sol 771  
Mission Log #452

I think we’ve figured it out! It took a few months, and some trial and error, but we’ve finally gotten the plants to last longer than a week after sprouting! Kuroo thinks I’m too excited over this, but how can I not be? I mean, sure it’s only a week longer than last time, and it’s a pretty small victory, but it’s a victory nonetheless!

Just in time too. Yahaba says there should be another storm season headed our way, and growing crops during those storms is next to impossible. With luck, this batch will be ready for harvest just before the storms start rolling in. And hopefully we’ll get better at understanding the seasonal pattern of Carystus so storms stop being a problem.

 

* * *

 

“You know,” Hajime says, voice crackling through the weak connection of their video call, “you don’t need to be so excited about passing Mars. It’s not like you’ve never seen it before. Hell, we _lived_ there for like half a year.”

“Yeah, two years ago.” Tooru drifts over to one of the small windows of the control room, the space station’s low gravity making his steps light and loose, and he looks out on the red planet their team is currently passing. The Elysium Planitia is facing them now. Tooru can make out the little geographic indicators of Albor Tholus and Elysium Mons; both of which Tooru had visited with their research team the last time he was on Mars. They look a lot smaller now. “It’s just different. Like, we’ve been down there. We’ve seen it.”

“A new perspective?”

Tooru smiles. He looks back over at Hajime. “Funny how distance does that.”

On screen, Hajime purses his lips. At least, Tooru thinks he does. The distortion of the video feed makes it hard to distinguish his expressions beyond ‘happy’ or ‘unhappy.’ This one sits somewhere in between. Not upset, but clearly not thrilled with Tooru’s observations or the conversation at hand.

Tooru, on the other hand, is in high spirits. This right here is the easy part. The part Tooru doesn’t mind or have to think about. These moments when he and Hajime can align their clocks and pause their realities in order to talk for even just a few minutes. They’ve done this before, coordinating from opposite ends of the globe between Hajime’s rocket tests for JAXA and Tooru’s international biology conventions at least twice a year, if not more. He’s used to this.

It’s already been about two months since their launch into space, and so far it doesn’t feel too different from an average business trip. If he ignores the blackness and occasional planet passing outside their windows and the gentle hum of the engines all around, he can almost imagine that’s exactly what’s happening. That he’s not millions of kilometers from Hajime. From his home.

That’s he’s not flying further and further away with every passing second.

“Well, from here on out it’s all new,” Hajime sighs. He leans his elbow on his table, chin cradled in the palm of his hand, and the interference in the video feed clears up just enough for Tooru to see Hajime smile indulgently at him. “You’d better take pictures.”

“Why should I? You’ll see all of this yourself soon enough.”

“Yeah, in like five years,” Hajime snorts, which makes Tooru stick his nose in the air with a haughty sniff.

“Like you’ll see my pictures any faster. I can’t send messages while at light speed, remember?”

Hajime opens his mouth, and then shuts it again.

There’s a long, heavy pause.

It takes a moment for Tooru to digest what exactly he just said, but when he does it feels like he’s just stepped into a gravity-heavy environment, stomach and heart dropping straight through the floor and into the vast vacuum of space. ‘Time dilation’ is a phrase he’s been avoiding since learning the crew assignments of the Mikaboshi program earlier that year. He knows the theory, remembers studying it in detail way back during the training program and thinking it would never apply to him. He feels it now like a weight around his neck, dragging him down and down and down into an unknown he’s not quite ready to explore.

“Tooru,” Hajime starts, soft and hesitant, even from millions of kilometers away. And Tooru just shakes his head.

The time is coming, Tooru knows, when they’ll have to actually sit down and talk about what this prolonged separation is going to mean for them. He knows this too well. It sits at the back of his mind, poking and prodding and pushing its way into every spare thought that flits through Tooru’s consciousness, refusing to be forgotten even when Tooru himself refuses to acknowledge it.

He just can’t. Not yet.

Tooru looks back at the red planet, hand pressed to the thick glass of the window. “Think our initials are still down there?” he asks, and ignores the frown he sees crossing Hajime’s face in the window’s reflection at the obvious change in topic. Ignores the clenching of his stomach at the possibility that this time Hajime won’t play along. That he’ll shatter the illusion. That they’ll have to face this thing Tooru isn’t sure he’s ready to confront.

But perhaps Hajime isn’t ready to confront it either, because he breathes out an exaggerated sigh and answers, “Of course not, dumbass,” following Tooru’s lead. “It’s been two years. The wind would have blown it all away in _two days_.”

“But how can you be _sure_? Maybe there hasn’t been a storm there all this time! Maybe the universe wants to immortalize us!”

Hajime sighs again, not so exaggerated this time and full of the exasperation that Tooru knows and loves so well, and sets about explaining to Tooru in a resigned sort of tone how it was scientifically impossible for storms to avoid an entire plain for two whole years, especially because JAXA has records of all the sandstorms the planet has experienced since they left, almost forty percent of which originated in the very place Tooru had mentioned.

 _This is fine_ , Tooru thinks, watching Hajime wave his hands wildly, expression lit by his fervor. This is all they need right now, not some heavy conversation that’ll only end with Hajime closing himself off and Tooru leaving in tears. Because that’s what _will_ happen with how tightly strung they both are over this whole issue. Like an elastic string just waiting to snap.

Tooru prefers being stretched thin to the fallout of the inevitable break. And seeing Hajime respond with passion instead of his usual scowls to Tooru’s tiny prompts, he’s pretty sure Hajime prefers it that way too.

 

* * *

 

It takes a few weeks, and a frankly impressive concentration of effort involving food bribes and locking Tooru in his room for an entire day to prove his plants could live without him constantly hovering over them, but Kuroo finally manages to convince Tooru to leave the Hab and explore the northern plains of Carystus with the rest of the team.

Tooru’s still hesitant. It feels like a waste of time to go exploring when he could be in the greenhouse, synthesizing new soil combinations or testing new gene splices, making sure their plants survive. And isn’t that the most important thing right now? Shouldn’t he be focusing on fixing their food production? What’s the point in him exploring the planet when all of his work is right here, in the Hab?

Kuroo levels him with a flat stare when he tries to argue this, then glances pointedly at the disheveled state of Tooru’s clothing, which makes Tooru kind of want to curl up and hide in his room from shame. He knows he looks like shit, with deep bags beneath his eyes and limp hair and a too-thin frame, but he’s been busy. Trying to make these crops work. Trying to make Carystus sustainable. His hands and the knees of his pants are covered in dirt. Tooru thinks it might be permanent with how often he’s kneeling beside his crops, digging around them to get root samples or soil samples or to plant some new, genetically-modified seedling in place of one that died. He can’t even remember the last time he was truly clean, and maybe that should tell him something about how much he needs a break, but he can’t think about anything beyond the need to get this batch of crops to survive.

He goes along though. Mostly because he knows Kuroo won’t leave him alone unless he does; they’re far too much alike, as much as Tooru hates to admit it. And at least he’ll get something useful out of it. He’s been having trouble figuring out how to keep his plants from snapping under the force of Carystus’s wind. Maybe a trip to the northern plains will reveal a solution.

He lifts a hand to shield his eyes from the beaming Carystus sun, brighter now without the obstruction of any clouds across the horizon. It’s the first completely clear day in a long while. He supposes all the storms that have blown through— thankfully far enough away from the Hab not to affect his crops— have pushed all the clouds from their immediate surroundings as well. It’s nice to see a clear, blue sky for once instead of the murky brown overcast of constant storms. It’s less nice to still feel like he’s being roasted alive by their new sun, just like he did when they first arrived almost two years ago.

“Weird that the temperature never seems to change, isn’t it,” he comments to Futakuchi, who’s bending down with a data pad in hand to examine a rare, bare patch of ground right by their feet.

“I suppose,” Futakuchi answers. He brushes away some dirt with a hand, uncovering several small, creature-made holes as the stability of their covering disintegrates and soil slides into the darkness with whatever it is that lives there, and he makes a note of some sort on the pad. “It will probably be another twenty or thirty years until we start noticing temperature changes. Or at least that’s what Yahaba’s predicting.”

And Yahaba’s probably right. He knows better than any of them what Carystus’s small axis tilt and long, dual orbit with Alpha Centauri B means, and how those two facts will effect the seasons of their new home. “Still, it’s strange.”

He’s always gauged the passage of time by the change in weather. The melting of sticky summer heat into sharp winter ice. Leaves turning from green to red to brown to nonexistent, replaced instead by flecks of ice until the sun’s warmth coaxes forth new life with the coming of Spring. The days spent with Hajime walking in the park, or curled up on the couch together with mugs of hot chocolate in hand.

Time, here, for him, is important. To not be able to count the days, hours, minutes, seconds he still must wait by the changing of the seasons is unnerving.

Tooru looks out over the field, fingers grazing over the grainy tops of the golden-green grass around them. He has a few samples stashed away in his backpack already. Plenty of roots and stalks and seeds to examine in the privacy of his greenhouse once they return back to the Hab. But, for once in several long, long, months, Tooru isn’t thinking about his research or his crops. He’s instead remembering a rooftop garden, quiet in the solitude of the JAXA compound, and warm from more than just the sun.

Time, here, for him, is important. Has always been important.

“I never thought I would end up here,” he quietly admits, as much to himself as to Futakuchi.

“Neither did I.” Hesitantly, he glances up at Tooru, then back down at the ground. He laughs to himself, but it sounds all wrong, even to Tooru. More like it’s being dragged through a cheese grater than bubbling up like a natural spring. “Honestly, I thought I’d be chasing around little Futakuchi brats at this point, not chasing after alien lizards.”

“Kids?” Tooru questions. It’s a topic Tooru himself had never really thought about, and one he and Hajime never even attempted to discuss. Now he sees a red flush crawling up the back of Futakuchi’s neck and is struck, not for the first time, by the realization of just how little he knows of his teammates beyond the professional sphere. Maybe he should change that. “Did you have a partner back on Earth?”

Futakuchi nods. “Yeah. She was real sweet. Very understanding about the whole astronaut thing and being in space for months at a time. And she had the most beautiful smile I’ve ever seen.” He sighs, sits down with his legs folded beneath him, and runs a hand through his long, brown hair. His data pad sits in his lap, now forgotten. “If this mission hadn’t come along when it did, I probably would have married her.”

“You broke up with her?”

Futakuchi nods again. “It just wasn’t fair, you know?” he says with a small shrug. “We aren’t going back, and she isn’t in the space program, so she would have just been stuck waiting for something that could never happen. I couldn’t do it to her. Especially with the whole time dilation thing.”

He rubs a hand over his face, either not noticing or not caring how his fingers leave little brown streaks of dirt across his forehead and down his right cheek. Tooru doesn’t point it out, but sits silently with Futakuchi instead, unsure of what to say. What can he say? He never had to make that decision, and he’s lucky for it. It’s like Hajime said to him that night in their kitchen, back when they’d first gotten their assignments and Tooru had attempted to cook dinner in apology; six years of separation, but what was six years compared to a lifetime?

One of the lizard-like creatures they’ve been following peeks its head from a hole Futakuchi uncovered earlier. It shimmers for a moment beneath the sun like a milky rainbow, light beaming and refracting against its nearly translucent skin in a full spectrum of colors, before blinking its three eyes and disappearing back into the comfort of its dark hole. Futakuchi, staring at his boots, doesn’t even notice.

“She’s about six years older than me now. Somewhere in her thirties, while I haven’t aged a day,” he muses. When he looks back at Tooru, it’s with eyes glazed over by memories and loneliness, but not regret. “I couldn’t do that to her. I just couldn’t.”

Silently, Tooru places a hand on Futakuchi’s shoulder. He understands. He wonders though, if he were in Futakuchi’s place, assigned to this mission while Hajime was passed over completely and left Earth-bound, if he would have made the same decision to follow duty over love. If it would have been the right decision.

It kills him that he doesn’t have an answer.

 

* * *

 

“I don’t like time dilation,” Tooru declares, leaning back in one of the rooftop garden’s plastic chairs and dropping the textbook on his face in defeat. He doesn’t need to look at Hajime to know he’s rolling his eyes at Tooru’s theatrics. Nearly two years of friendship have attuned him to most of Hajime’s reactions in regards to Tooru’s actions— usually in the form of eye rolls and exasperated glares. Not that any of that stops Tooru from being dramatic.

“It’s just a theory, Oikawa.”

“Yeah, but it’s sad,” he says with a pout. “And I don’t like being sad.”

He moves the book from his face to his lap and stares up at the blue sky above. It’s a quiet day at JAXA, without any classes or ongoing projects to keep the astronaut program students running from place to place. Most of them, Tooru knows, are taking the day off to hang out in the less academic areas of the city. To let loose and celebrate before the first groups get sent up to the International Space Station for their first taste of space. Tooru had originally considered doing the same, but well… the emptiness of the area appeals to him. Helps him think, gives him room to breathe. Which he honestly needs in order to contemplate the reality the latest class reading that’s been forced upon him. That of time dilation.

He stretches out his left hand above his face, eclipsing the sun with his palm. Up here, on JAXA’s own rooftop garden, the light seems even brighter, even warmer, beaming down from the cloudless sky with an intensity that makes his skin prickle and fills the area with the sweet scent of sun-baked wheat. Even with the barrier of his hand, Tooru has to squint against the brightness. So he squints and sighs and curls his fingers into a fist, as if trying to catch the sun in his own hand.

“I mean, think about it this way,” he says when Hajime doesn’t respond. “It takes about eight minutes and twenty seconds for light to travel from the Sun to Earth, obviously traveling at light speed. We don’t really think about it, but what we’re seeing is eight minutes and twenty seconds older than what the Sun is experiencing right now. We’re always at least eight minutes behind. So if hypothetically,” he pauses for a moment, lowering his arm to press over his eyes. “Hypothetically, if I were to be on the Sun while everyone else is here, I’d always be eight minutes older than you, always experiencing things eight minutes before you, and that’s a bit sad, isn’t it?”

“I don’t think you’ll be flying to the sun any time soon.”

“No,” Tooru agrees. “But someday. Someday they’ll outfit a mission with light speed-capable engines, and then the question of time dilation is going to come up. Hypothetically, what would you do if you were dating someone and then got assigned a mission a few light years away?”

What would he do if he had to one day leave it all behind without even the assurance of possibly seeing them again?

Hajime sighs. There’s a thud and a quick crinkling of paper that speaks of Hajime closing his book. Then, “I’d probably break up with them.”

“Seriously?” Tooru asks, finally sitting up and looking over at Hajime, who shrugs his shoulders, already darker than normal thanks to the Summer sun and Hajime’s positive disposition towards tank tops, and looks away with an unreadable expression. Tooru feels something painful twist in his gut.

“Well, it depends on the situation, but yeah. If I’m going somewhere that far away, I’m assuming I’m not coming back. And even if I did, the whole time dilation thing means I’d still be much younger than everyone I left behind on Earth. Just isn’t fair to the person.”

Which makes sense. It makes sense and is completely logical and should be the right answer, but… But it’s not. Not for Tooru. For some reason, it’s not the answer he wants to hear.

“I get your point but,” Tooru begins, then shakes his head. “It still seems a little cold. What if it was me you were leaving behind? Would you cut ties with me too?”

“Are you kidding?” Hajime asks with a snort. “You’d just follow me out there anyways. Why should I cut ties with you?” He leans back in his chair, completely at ease, and Tooru feels that something in his gut relax just a bit as Hajime grins and adds, “I’m afraid you’re stuck with me, time dilation or not.”

And honestly, Tooru’s pretty sure he’s ok with that.

 

* * *

 

Sol 825  
Mission Log # 470

Turns out those samples I took from the northern plains are going to come in handy.

The crops are starting to die again, for some reason or another. A whole corner of the field has been lost without leaving anything we might be able to eat or replant. We’re doing what we can to keep the rest of the field alive long enough harvest, though it might be time for us to just take what we’ve grown and cut our losses. Make do with not-fully-ripened food. It’ll still beat the hell out of the freeze-dried meals though; that’s for sure.

At least we’ll have one actual harvest to work with, small as it is. With that, step 1 to sustainability is completed. Step 2 will be making sure our future crops don’t die the next time around, even a little bit.

Wish us luck. We’ll probably need it.

 

* * *

 

It’s about two weeks after they pass Mars and are heading through the asteroid belt that Tooru notices a change in his conversations with Hajime. A tense distance and reservation that, if he’s being honest with himself, was always there but has now expanded to a tangible level, and that worries Tooru. Leaves him tense and more determined than ever to fill the silence that becomes more and more present in their conversations with every new video call.

Hajime is, at his core, a generally quiet person. Tooru’s used to filling his silence with rambling and answers to questions he knows Hajime’s curious about, but won’t ever ask. This is different though. This isn’t so much Hajime being quiet as it is Hajime trying to hide something, refusing to even meet Tooru’s eyes and keeping his mouth pressed into a thin line, as if holding words back. And Tooru doesn’t appreciate it.

“Something’s bothering you,” he states flat-out when his patience has finally run thin. When he’s tired of watching the dark circles under Hajime’s eyes grow even darker over the week. When he wants to just grab Hajime by his shoulders and shake him until some sort of explanation falls from his lips.

Hajime glances at him, then looks at something past the frame of his camera. The glance lasts only two seconds. Tooru wants to scream for the next two hours.

He clasps his hands together tightly so he won’t hit anything. And he _really_ wants to hit _something_. Preferably the handsome, but blank face on the screen in front of him, though he knows that’s not possible. “Hajime,” he pleads instead, “talk to me. What’s going on? I can’t help if you won’t tell me.”

“There’s nothing you can do about it regardless,” Hajime answers with a shrug. He’s probably trying to make it look nonchalant, inconsequential. It doesn’t work. “Just don’t worry about it, Tooru. You have enough on your plate as is.”

Tooru squeezes his hands together between his legs and leans forward in his chair. “That’s not your decision to make.”

It’s not entirely Tooru’s decision to make either, but if Hajime’s going to hide his problems without even discussing that choice with Tooru, then Tooru thinks he has the right to call Hajime out on his bullshit. They’re in this together, for better or for worse. They made that decision the moment Tooru accepted his Mikaboshi assignment and Hajime promised they’d be fine. Hajime doesn’t get to back out of that now.

“We can’t make this work if we don’t communicate, Hajime,” Tooru says. “You’ve been acting weird all week and it’s worrying me. Please tell me what’s wrong.”

And maybe he’s being stubborn about this, maybe there really isn’t anything he can do, but he wants to at least be there _for_ Hajime if he can’t be there _with_ Hajime. He’d promised Tooru they’d be fine. That they’d work it out.

Hajime sighs and rubs the back of his neck. “It’s really stupid. Honestly, Tooru. It’s not worth talking about.”

“Well, it’s clearly bothering you, so it can’t be that stupid.”

“Drop it,” Hajime snaps. He clenches his jaw and very pointedly refuses to look at Tooru, who feels a ripple of unease wash through his mind. “Just leave it alone, alright? I really don’t want to talk about it right now.”

“Well, what do you want to talk about?” Tooru asks before he can stop himself. “Because lately, I’ve been the only one doing the talking! And let me tell you, it’s _really_ lonely having a conversation with myself.”

This time, Hajime _does_ look at him— really, _really_ looks at him, with narrowed eyes and irritation twitching in the muscles of his left cheek— and Tooru almost withers back into himself, chastised. He’s seen that look on Hajime’s face a million times. Seen that fiery glare narrowed at new lab techs with unfounded arrogance, and at rocket engines that refuse to work, and passersby that choose, unwisely, to make comments on a relationship that isn’t theirs to butt into. But never has Tooru seen it this way. Never has he had the force of Hajime’s ire narrowed in on him. Not like this.

“You think I don’t know that?” Hajime asks, voice rough in a way Tooru hasn’t heard in years. “Do you know how often this week I’ve turned to tell you something and found you weren’t there? You’re almost at Jupiter now. Soon you’ll be at light speed and I won’t be able to talk to you at all.”

Tooru frowns. “You knew this was going to happen, Hajime. I talked to you about this. I told you it’d be hard. You still told me to go.”

“I know!” Hajime nearly yells. His voice cracks. He freezes, takes a deep breath, then leans forward to rest his forehead in the palms of his hands, fingers curling into his dark mess of spiky hair. “I know, Tooru. It’s just hard not being out there with you. I don’t know if I can handle five years.”

Tooru doesn’t know what to say to that. There’s nothing he _can_ say. So he just… doesn’t.

He was afraid of this, back when they first got their letters and realized they were on different missions. He’d said as much to Hajime, voicing his concerns and protests because five years without a single word from each other is nothing short of torture, and Tooru had _known_ it would come down to this, despite all of Hajime’s assurances. That they’d be sitting here, angry and upset and terrified, because of the distance and the looming break in time.

It’s the snapping point for both of them. They’ve reached the end.

“Maybe,” Tooru begins, dropping his gaze and ignoring the way his stomach drops as well, “you shouldn’t wait for me then. Maybe we should take a break.”

There’s a long, heavy pause.

Then Hajime sighs.

“Yeah,” he says. He sounds defeated. “Yeah, maybe we should.”

 

* * *

 

He feels the storm before he sees it, strong gusts of wind and dirt scraping against his skin and the metal walls of the Hab.

Tooru looks up from his field of crops and across the horizon at the change in breeze, but only sees clear, blue skies across the horizon, just as it’s been for the past week. Something feels off about it though. Not just with the wind, but with the atmosphere itself. It feels heavy, oppressive, charged. Like it’s preparing for something, just waiting to rear its ugly head.

Tooru doesn’t like the feel of it. Everything inside of him is screaming to find shelter, and he hasn’t gotten this far in the space program without learning to trust his gut. Better to be safe than sorry. Particularly here, where the only source of shelter is their small Hab.

“How much do we have left?” he asks Yahaba, glancing at the large plastic crate they had brought out for harvesting. It looks half-full— just like Tooru’s own— so they should be pretty much finished. A tiny crop of only a few choice plants, but also a rare stroke of luck.

“I got everything over here,” Yahaba answers. He dusts of his hands and looks around the field with an urgency that says Tooru isn’t the only one worried about the change in the wind. “I think only the potatoes are left. Over in that corner.”

“Leave them. We can dig them up when the storm passes.”

Yahaba nods. They both know the potatoes will be fine, deep in the ground as they are. It’s the rest of their crops that need to get inside. Tooru isn’t about to risk their first healthy, harvested crop just to dig up some potatoes they can just as easily get tomorrow.

It’s a smart call. By the time he and Yahaba shoulder their way into the Hab, both carrying the light crates in their hands, the afternoon sun of Carystus has been blocked out by black clouds rolling through the sky, throwing their shelter into darkness. The Hab lights flicker on while Tooru and Yahaba set their harvest on the floor of the kitchen area, just as Kuroo comes hurrying around the corner.

“How close is it,” he asks without any sort of preamble. His eyes are wide, mouth set into a grim line across his face, and the little bit of relief Tooru had been feeling in the safety of the Hab comes crashing down into slight panic at his expression.

Tooru knows that look. Knows it well. And it never means anything good.

“Maybe a few miles,” Yahaba answers, voice quivering and hesitant. Tooru thinks it’s even less than that. The storm’s moving fast— much faster than they’ve seen before— and it’ll probably take only a few more minutes before it actually hits.

The look on Kuroo’s face somehow becomes even grimmer.

“Shit,” he hisses, and scrubs a hand over his face. His entire body is tense, muscles clenched in tight lines that make his posture stiff and perfect and worrying. Though his tight-lipped silence is even worse.

There’s something he isn’t saying. Which only makes Tooru more concerned because, despite his tendency to let the others fill the silence for him, he’s usually eager to talk about his stress, or at least spew a constant stream of complaints in an effort to solve whatever’s troubling him. Lord knows the whole team has heard enough of his ranting in the past year to pick up on that fact. Him not talking now is a sign of how bad this thing, whatever it is, appears to him. As if by not talking about it he can will it to go away.

Tooru’s seriously thinking of shaking an explanation out of their Commander when Kuroo finally sighs and waves them back the control room, where Akaashi is no doubt holding court and keeping careful watch on the storm’s approach. “Ok, you guys go sit with the others. They’ll fill you in.”

“And where are you going?” Tooru demands, because he knows if Kuroo isn’t including himself with the others then he’s either about to do something very brave or very stupid. Possibly both.

Kuroo huffs, clearly not appreciating being either delayed or interrogated, but answers, “The wind is pulling one of the Hab panels loose,” as he walks over to the Hab door and keys in his override code. There’s a hiss of the door unseals.

“You’re going out there,” Tooru quietly deduces. He catches the side of the door panel and leans closer to Kuroo, feeling urgent. “If the storm hits while you’re out there, you’ll die! The wind is too strong! And debris will get you if the wind doesn’t!”

“The wind’s only going to get worse. Akaashi estimates it’s almost twice the speed we’re used to. If that panel isn’t secured, it’s going to be torn right off, and then we’re all fucked.”

Tooru can’t argue with him on that, because Kuroo’s right. Their shelter can usually hold up against the storms and keep them all safe, but if it gets breached by the storm, even just a bit, the whole integrity of the building will be at its mercy. The structure can’t withstand wind on both the outside and the inside. It would get knocked apart in two minutes flat, along with all the rest of them.

But Kuroo going out there doesn’t sit right with Tooru either. Not with the storm so close at hand. Though he knows there’s no other way, because _someone_ has to go out there, and Kuroo isn’t the type of commander to let anyone else risk their lives if he can help it.

Kuroo brushes past Tooru to grab the portable toolbox they keep by the door for these kinds of emergencies. His mouth is set into a grim, determined line, and Tooru bites back his protests, knowing they won’t help. Arguing this further will only waste time, and Kuroo needs as much of that as he can get. He stays beside Kuroo as the door slides open, however, and looks out upon the black horizon while his heart thunders away in his chest.

Kuroo lets out a shaky breath.

“Tooru, Shigeru,” he starts. Pauses. Swallows. Starts again. “If the storm hits while I’m still outside, seal the door. Don’t wait for me. That’s an order.”

“Ok,” Tooru whispers. He can’t say anything else.

Nodding, Kuroo holds the toolbox to his chest and walks through the door, right into the gusts of the oncoming storm. Tooru shuts the door behind him, but leaves it unsealed. Small bursts of wind push through the cracks surrounding the door and blow against his face, metallic and cold and frightening.

He presses a hand against the door, then turns and follows Yahaba into the other room of the Hab, where the other three members of their team are huddled around Akaashi’s computer set up.

“How’s it look?” Tooru asks as he walks over. Futakuchi and Bokuto both look up from the screens to offer him brief, serious nods, but Akaashi stays as is, hunched over his desk, right hand scribbling calculations across a pad of paper with so much speed that Tooru’s hand aches just watching it. Even worse is seeing the way his eyes never waver from the growing mass of red and purple on his screen— courtesy of the satellite JAXA put into orbit a year before their launch.

“Not good,” Akaashi answers. “It’s about ten kilometers wide and moving at a fast pace. And we’re right in the middle of it.”

Right where the damage will be greatest.

Tooru stands behind Akaashi’s chair and looks over his shoulder at the screen. He doesn’t claim to really understand all the data and calculations flashing over the two outside screens of Akaashi’s three-screen set up— that’s more Yahaba’s field than his own— but even Tooru can see the large mass of purple inching down the middle screen towards the white spot of their Hab and knows it means nothing good. Kuroo can’t be out during that. He won’t survive.

Yahaba squeezes in between Bokuto and Futakuchi and narrows his eyes at the data. “It’s fast,” he mutters. “It’s too fast. If it keeps up this speed, Kuroo will have only three minutes. Four tops.”

“I don’t think he’ll have even that,” Akaashi retorts.

In the periphery of his vision, Tooru notices Bokuto shrink back in his seat, slowly curling into himself like a turtle into his shell. Tooru can sympathize. It must be hard watching this storm come up and knowing your best friend is out there, facing down the clouds, likely to be killed. He can’t even begin to imagine how Bokuto must feel right now, but it’s pretty obvious by how quiet he is now. No words. No sounds. Not even the creak of a chair as he pulls his legs toward his chest.

The atmosphere is crushing. A heavy weight of dread settling across Tooru’s shoulders and pushing him centimeter by centimeter into the ground as the rattling of the wind against the walls of the Hab grows louder.

He doesn’t know what to do. Doesn’t know how to help. It’s not made any easier by the fact that Kuroo doesn’t even had a headset or radio he can talk to them by, so they don’t know what the state of his progress is. Whether he’s secured that panel or not. If he’s on his way back.

“We can’t wait much longer,” Yahaba whispers, and looks up at Tooru. “Someone needs to seal the door.”

“If we seal the door while Kuroo’s still out there, he’ll probably die,” Akaashi argues. For the first time since Tooru’s entered the room, Akaashi looks away from the radars, the blue lights of the screens illuminating the creases between his brows and the tense set of his jaw, and that says more about how serious the situation at hand is than anything else. That Akaashi is worried, that he’s actually _showing_ his worry, only makes the dread hanging over Tooru even heavier.

Tooru bites his lip and looks over at Yahaba, whose grim expression mirrors the way Tooru feels inside. Only they know Kuroo’s orders regarding the storm and the door. The responsibility of that nearly chokes Tooru. Makes it hard to speak.

“If we don’t seal the door, we risk the integrity of the Hab and our own safety,” Tooru finally says, keeping his eyes on Yahaba so he doesn’t have to see Akaashi’s torment or Futakuchi’s horror or Bokuto’s grief. Seeing that would only make what he needs to say even harder. “We have to seal the door before we’re caught in the storm. Kuroo knows this. He went out there knowing the risks and prepared to face the consequences.” Closing his eyes, Tooru listens to the soft beeping of the radar and the scraping of dirt against the walls, and he takes a deep breath. “He told us to seal the door when the storm hits. We have to follow through on that.”

There’s a soft whimper at that, and then Bokuto stands from his chair and walks out of the room, heading in the direction of his room. They all watch him go in subdued silence. There’s nothing that can be said. Not to Bokuto. Not to Kuroo’s best friend.

Tooru lets out a long sigh when the door shuts behind Bokuto. He clenches his trembling fingers in the material of his pants and tries to calm himself. Tries to regain an impartial mind. To make a decision. With both Kuroo and Bokuto out of commission, Tooru is next in the line of command, and the others will be looking to him to make this call. To shoulder this responsibility.

He has to do it. He _has_ to. No one else in this team would be able to make this choice. It is a burden only he can bear.

He glances around at the rest of the team, at their expectant and terrified expressions, and then looks at the radar. Sees the purple blob of the storm almost on top of them. Knows what he must do.

“We can’t wait any longer,” he whispers. “Seal the door.”

 

* * *

 

Jupiter somehow isn’t as exciting as Tooru was expecting it to be. He sits by the large windows of the observation deck and watches the giant gas planet pass by and feels oddly unenthused about the whole thing. Never mind that he’s never been this close to Jupiter— has never seen the Great Red Spot, or the halo ring, or any of its four Galilean moons with his own eyes. The breathtaking magnificence of Jupiter that captivates the rest of his crew somehow seems to skip right over him. He can’t even summon enough interest to take pictures of the planet and fulfill his promise to Hajime.

Although part of that might be because he’s unsure whether or not their promise still stands. Whether Tooru’s allowed to contact him now that they’re taking a break, or if he should just stay quiet and leave Hajime alone. Would Hajime want any messages from Tooru right now? Would he rather Tooru not send him any pictures? Even if they’re of a planet Hajime’s never gotten to see before?

Tooru presses his fingers against the cool glass and wonders.

It’s been a few weeks since they last spoke. Not since that disastrous video call as Tooru’s ship passed through the asteroid belt. Not since they both agreed to take some time away from each other and ended the call in anger.

It’s not like Tooru expected any differently, but he wonders now if it was the right decision. If letting Hajime go is what’s best for the both of them. He’s lost count of the number of times he’s logged into his computer expecting a message from Hajime only to be reminded by the giant, bold ‘0’ of his inbox that messages aren’t something he should expect anymore. Nor are voice calls. Or Hajime’s existence in his life in general.

That sudden awareness rips through Tooru’s chest like a meteor through Earth’s atmosphere; blinding and burning and ultimately leaving him with nothing. Just an emptiness in his chest where his heart used to be. A void Tooru doubts he’ll ever be able to refill without Hajime at his side, shining like Tooru’s own personal sun.

But Tooru can’t say that to Hajime. Not now, with how close his jump to light speed is. They have only a matter of days before the ship passes Jupiter completely and can leave this solar system behind. Can rush across the universe to the planet Tooru will now call home. For him, the journey will only take a week or so. But for Hajime… for Hajime it’d mean waiting five whole years, alone and miserable.

Tooru can’t ask that of him. Not after the conversation they’d had. It just wouldn’t be fair.

Sighing, he pulls his knees to his chest and wraps his arms around his legs. The pink and orange glow of Jupiter reminds him a bit of a sunset, and he thinks that’s kind of fitting. That the last thing they’ll see of this solar system holds the same color scheme as the end of day. Like a final goodbye to the life they’d known here before the dawn of a new existence in the Alpha Centauri system.

He should take a photo of this, if only to document the moment. To always remember the last sight of these planets he’s grown up knowing. He’ll want that in the coming years, even if he doesn’t send them to Hajime like he promised.

He should take a photo of this. But he doesn’t.

Instead, he just watches the planet pass by and thinks that maybe it’s for the best.

 

* * *

 

They dig a grave for Kuroo about a mile south of the Hab, where the barren landscape begins morphing into a field of grass and small, prairie-like flowers, and then cover the fresh mound with a layer of heavy rocks, so that not even the storm that killed him can disturb him from his rest.

It’s a silent burial, with only the soft rustle of grass in the wind and heavy slice of a shovel in dirt breaking through the tense atmosphere around them. They don’t bother wasting words on a eulogy. Kuroo wouldn’t want that, and they all know him too well to need a reminder of how great a person he was. How brave, how selfless, how loyal, how abso-fucking-lutely brilliant of a leader he really was. The qualities they’d speak of if they had the words are the very qualities that led Kuroo out into that storm in the first place. Praising them now would be like pouring salt into an open wound and leaving it to fester, and that’s something they really don’t need to deal with at the moment. Not with their commander six feet underground and their pilot— their next in line— wandering the hallways of the Hab like a shell-shocked ghost.

“He hasn’t actually slept in days,” Akaashi confesses, looking at the ground rather than the three of them. There are dark bags beneath his eyes that tell of his own sleepless nights, probably spent either at Bokuto’s side or watching over him from the shadows. An exhaustion that hangs from his shoulders like dead weight. “He just sits in front of the monitors. Ever since the storm.”

Yahaba bites his bottom lip and looks guiltily away, which Tooru thinks is just silly, to be honest, because if anyone carries the blame or guilt for what happened to Kuroo, it’s Tooru. Yahaba may have been there to hear the orders, but Tooru’s the one who made the call that day. He’s the one that sealed the door.

“We need to do something about this, don’t we?” Futakuchi asks in a hushed voice. He glances between all three of them, searching for direction none of them could actually give. “I mean, he’s next in line for command, right? Can he even make decisions like this?”

“No. Not at all.”

They all fall silent at Akaashi’s answer.

It’s a difficult spot to be in, with no Commander to lean on and their second-in-command still too shocked to be of any use. Not that Tooru begrudges Bokuto his grief. He knows how close Bokuto and Kuroo were. How close they would still be if that storm hadn’t come and torn it all apart. Still, it doesn’t change the fact that, without a functioning leader, their crew has fallen to a standstill in almost everything beyond basic survival. All the progress they’ve made in mapping the planet and discovering new life means nothing now that they’ve lost the driving force behind all their expeditions. The crew needs someone to change that. They need their Commander— someone to intercede with the JAXA officials back on Earth, to plan their experiments and lay out their priorities, to make the decisions no one else will— and right now Bokuto just can’t take on that mantle. The wound is far too fresh.

Feeling hopeless, Tooru bows his head to stare at the small patch of plastic floor within their circle of chairs. Futakuchi’s bare toes curl against the ground. He hadn’t even bothered to change from the sweat pants and tshirt he slept in to talk to them. What was the point, after all? They aren’t going anywhere or doing anything important in this state of confusion. Even Akaashi’s usually immaculate pair of boots look worse for wear, no doubt due to the exhaustion of his late night wandering. Tooru knows he doesn’t look much better.

They’re all a mess right now— paler and thinner than they should be, with unkempt hair and bleary eyes. Tooru doubts any of them have gotten more than four or five hours of sleep each night since the storm, which isn’t nearly enough. More than what Bokuto’s getting, but still not enough. Not by half.

“Futakuchi’s right,” Tooru finally says, breaking the silence. “Something needs to be done. And soon.” He taps the tips of his fingers together for a few moments, thinking the situation over, then laces them together and looks up at Akaashi. Meets Akaashi’s tired, but resigned gaze and sees the acceptance of what Tooru’s about to ask in the tight lines around Akaashi’s mouth. “You can do it, right? Declare him unfit for duty?”

Akaashi nods. “I’ll need Futakuchi to back me up as our resident medic, but—” he hesitates, then closes his eyes and lets out a deep sigh. “I’m closest to him and JAXA knows that. They’ll listen to me.”

Tooru is the one to nod this time, accepting Akaashi’s assurance without any further comment. It’s a callous call, and Tooru hates being the one to put Akaashi in this sort of situation— testifying against his best friend and partner to the head of their organization— but it’s what they have to do to ensure the success of this mission and their continued survival. Even Bokuto will agree with that logic. Eventually. Once he’s had time to properly grieve and recover.

It’s the best choice. It’s the only decision they can make.

Yahaba curses and runs a hand through his hair, forcing a few strands to stick up at odd angles. “This is a disaster,” he mutters in a weak voice, exhaustion clear in the heavy droop of his shoulders. “Who’s our commander now?”

And, well, there’s really only one answer to that question. An answer that Tooru honestly never considered becoming relevant, and one he isn’t sure he’s ready to accept, despite knowing he has no other choice. He swallows thickly and clenches his hands together in his lap.

“I am, I guess,” he answers, and then suddenly feels very, very tired.

The responsibility settles on him all at once and steals the air from his lungs. Suffocates him in the same way he’s always thought the vacuum of space might if he ever cracked the helmet of his EVA suit; that unknowable void sucking and sucking away at him until it feels like there’s nothing left inside him. Just empty space.

Tooru stands and walks out of the room. He can’t stay in there any longer. Not with his crew. Not while knowing their lives are now in his hands. He just can’t. He needs room to breathe. He needs time to accept what he’s just taken upon himself. He needs to _not think_.

His feet lead him to the greenhouse, where he seals the door shut beside him and collapses onto the stool in front of his workbench. It’s not quite the same as his rooftop garden back on Earth, but with the multitude of plants in such a small amount of space, it’s close enough to feel like a sanctuary. To restore some of his calm and ease the iron grip around his lungs just enough so he can breathe.

He lays his cheek against the surface of the desk and inhales. In front of him sits his cactus. He focuses on that so he doesn’t lose himself in his own frantic thoughts. Makes it his anchor. The orange hue of its clay pot. The tiny spikes crawling all over its skin. The healthy green of its rounded body. The slightly musty smell of its dirt bed.

Tooru touches a finger to the cool clay pot and breathes. In, out. In, out. In, out.

He doesn’t think.

 

* * *

 

“Rowdy bunch, aren’t they?” Kuroo comments, floating over to Tooru through the zero-G atmosphere of the small arm connecting their launch shuttle to the lightspeed-equipped space station they’ll take to the Alpha Centauri system and nodding at the other four already causing chaos in the space station. “Have to wonder what JAXA was thinking sticking these guys on a mission together.”

Tooru snorts and quips, “You’re one to talk,” which only makes Kuroo laugh in response. It’s well-known among their crew just how rowdy Kuroo himself can get, especially when put up against Bokuto, who knows just what buttons to press to get Kuroo all riled up and ready to throw some punches, so it’s not like he has any room to pretend he isn’t part of that ‘rowdy bunch,’ and he knows it. “Why JAXA thought it was a good idea putting those guys together under _your_ command is what worries me more.”

“Harsh, man. Are you this vicious with your own boyfriend?”

“Sometimes. When he pisses me off.”

“Poor Iwaizumi,” Kuroo teases. He’s grinning as he says it though, so Tooru doesn’t take the comment to heart.

Turning back to his crew mates, Tooru watches Yahaba chuck one of their vacuum-sealed food packs at Futakuchi’s head, yelling something about botany being a ‘real science’ no matter what Futakuchi believes as Futakuchi laughs and Bokuto eggs the both of them on from the sidelines. Akaashi just shakes his head and goes about his business in tortured silence. Tooru can empathize.

They’ve been in space for a grand total of six hours and already their crew is at each others’ throats. Tooru isn’t sure how they’re going to manage living together in the close quarters of their space craft for the next few months without a murder taking place, let alone sharing a Hab for the next five years. If this is what Tooru has to look forward to, he thinks he might just prefer staying in their launch shuttle and not going any further. At least not until Hajime is there to ground him and keep him from lashing out himself. Exploring a new planet isn’t worth all this trouble.

“They mean well,” Kuroo says. Softly, as if sharing a secret the others can’t know. “All of this has been a lot to process in just six hours. Fighting like that… it keeps things normal. Helps them forget how much they’re leaving behind.”

“Coping mechanism,” Tooru observes. Beside him, Kuroo nods.

Tooru hadn’t thought about their antics in that sort of light before, but now that Kuroo mentions it, it makes sense. These arguments are the same ones they’ve hashed through before, and will probably fight over again in the future, just like clockwork. A routine that keeps them grounded in the moment and focused on their mission. Keeps them from thinking about how these next few days will be the very last days they’ll get to see Earth with their own eyes, before the planet becomes nothing more than a tiny, blue dot in the sky, and then nothing at all. They’ll get to see the Sun from the surface of Carystus, shining as a tiny star in the night sky, but not Earth. Not home.

He can’t begrudge them their arguments now, knowing that. Can’t be annoyed with their method of coping, of forgetting their loss. If he could forget the sorrow sitting like a rock in his stomach by joining their fight, he would. The distraction would be a welcome break from his silent mourning.

“Just bear with it for a bit longer,” Kuroo asks him, clapping a supportive hand over Tooru’s shoulder. “They’ll settle down in a few days or so. Then we’ll get to work.”

“Yeah.”

Kuroo grins at him, then pushes off the wall with his hands to swim through the arm and into the artificial gravity of their space station. Tooru watches him go with a new respect, and a little bit of curiosity. He sees now why Kuroo was chosen to be Commander for this mission, for this rowdy team, and it makes him slightly more willing to leave Earth behind and join this new family of his in this mission. More willing to rely on and work with them. For the first time Tooru thinks he might be alright with these guys until Hajime’s crew arrives.

He’s at least willing to try.

 

* * *

 

Sol 893  
Mission Log #493

Big storm came through a few days ago. We got the crop in, but just barely.

Kuroo’s dead.

He’s dead, and I’m now Commander. God help us all.

 

* * *

 

He’s bombarded first by all the video calls he has to make with JAXA. Between their concern over the crew’s mental state and their need to give Tooru commander clearance and catch him up on his responsibilities, Tooru seems to spend more time in the Hab’s command room talking with the top officials back at JAXA than actually taking care of either his crew or his plants, which he feels should be his primary concern right now. At least until his crew has come to terms with Kuroo’s death and has had their time to mourn.

Not that Tooru can say that to JAXA’s top brass with any sort of confidence. They already make him feel like an incompetent child with all their lists and security levels and plans that Tooru now needs to make sure happen. Not to mention the fact that Tooru was never supposed to become Commander in the first place. He’s just a really good botanist with some experience in space. What does he know about all this? How can he make these sorts of decisions when they’re so far out of his usual jurisdiction?

So instead he stays silent, and watches the JAXA officials debate where and when their crew’s next expedition should go, and what sort of tasks they should be carrying out, and is it more important for them to observe Carystus lifeforms or geography this time around? Or maybe the geology? So many tasks and pointless experiments that Tooru’s pretty sure will never actually affect them in the long run. Things they could push off until later, after the team is back on its feet.

God, is this what the JAXA officials are always like? How did Kuroo even stand it?

“A lot of complaining afterwards,” Akaashi tells him with a shrug. “I suppose it was his way of processing. Helped him find ways to smooth over their demands with our needs most of the time. Koutarou and I got used to it after a while.”

Tooru groans. “I wish I could do the same.” He slumps against the plastic table in the kitchen area, his cheek pressed against its cool surface, and wishes he could just stay there forever. That he wouldn’t have to listen to yet another discussion through the static of their video calls later that night about what his team should be doing. “Complaining only makes me more frustrated. It always has.”

“What do you normally do on missions then?”

“I—” Tooru stops and tilts his head to the side, realizing for the first time that he doesn’t have any sort of process or coping mechanism for this situation. Not one that he can recall. Or well, not one he can do on his own. “Normally, Hajime would poke and prod at me until I finally took some sort of action.”

And it’s strange Tooru has never noticed that fact until now. Never noticed how Hajime would slowly, but steadily shift Tooru’s irritation at his problem into irritation with Hajime’s needling. How that always managed to clear Tooru’s thoughts enough for him to find a satisfactory solution. How Tooru himself has so come to rely on Hajime’s needling that he’s now at a loss on how to deal with these new issues of his.

After years of living and working with Hajime, years of supporting and helping and guiding each other through every problem, Tooru’s forgotten what it’s like having to rely only on himself. He’s no longer used to the full weight of it all. He’s shared the burden with Hajime for far too long.

The realization plants little seedlings of doubt in his mind, which grow and flourish under the mounting pressure of the JAXA officials and the steady cracking of his team’s psyches. What was just the frustration of constant video calls becomes the panic of the Hab’s water reclaimer acting up, and the frenzy of trying to get yet another crop into the ground, and the suffocating concern over Bokuto’s continued silence. Tooru feels like he has to be almost everywhere at once, now that he’s Commander. Like everything is now his direct responsibility. And without Hajime there to act as his anchor, the pressure of that position crashes against him like a shower of meteorites, leaving him pockmarked and broken.

 _Can I really do this_ , he asks himself each night, staring at the red armband he inherited from Kuroo as Commander. Can he live up to the expectations everyone now holds for him? Can he really handle all of this on his own?

 

* * *

 

“So this is it,” Tooru says with excitement, hugging his application to his chest like the most precious jewel in the universe. He spins on his heel and beams at Hajime, who’s watching him with a mixture of amusement and hesitance, little lines of worry folded into the skin at the corners of his eyes. “Once we turn in these applications, we’ll be all set! Just a year and a half and we’ll be off to a brand new solar system!”

“Hopefully,” Hajime says, which makes Tooru snort.

“Please. We’re some of the best candidates in this entire program. There’s no way we won’t get chosen.”

“I suppose.” He looks down at his own application. A tiny frown pulls at his mouth, and he furrows his brows. “Are you sure about this, Tooru?” he asks, as he’s asked every day since they agreed to apply to the Mikaboshi program. “There’s a lot that could go wrong here. We need to be sure about this.”

Tooru knows he’s right, in a sense. There are a lot of risks to this program, and a lot they’ll need to sacrifice. Their home, their families, their friends. The comforts of living in a large, civilized society. The security in knowing they’ll always be together; that if one of them is assigned a mission in space, they’ll always be able to return back home to their shared apartment when it’s all said and done. But that last one doesn’t concern Tooru nearly as much as it probably should. After all, he and Hajime have always been assigned to missions together. Always. Why should he believe that’s going to be any different this time around when he knows it won’t?

“I’m sure,” he says with complete confidence, and he slips his application into Ukai Keishin’s office mailbox with all the others. Hajime does the same. There’s a sense of finality about it. A locking into place of his future, like an asteroid being pulled in by the gravity of a planet, spinning round and round, trapped in orbit. It’s a feeling that excites him and makes him anticipate the future, even if Hajime’s still a little more hesitant about it.

Well, Hajime can be as hesitant as he wants. It won’t change the outcome of their applications. They’ll be together on this new planet in just a year and a half, exploring a world no one’s ever seen before, just as Tooru’s always dreamed. And right now, that’s all that matters to him.

“What would I do without you, Hajime,” he asks, gently poking Hajime’s cheek as they turn away from Ukai’s office. Hajime catches his hand and smirks at him.

“Probably die,” he teases. “But you don’t need to worry about that. You’re stuck with me, remember? No matter what happens.”

 

* * *

 

Tooru seals the door shut just before the storm hits, its winds blasting against the Hab’s walls with just as much force as the last storm they faced. He hears it howling outside the door, and feels the shaking of the walls, and allows himself a moment to feel grateful that all of the Hab’s structural damage had already been fixed and wouldn’t cause them any problems this time. That they’re safe and secure and together. That they won’t have to lose anyone else to this planet’s anger.

He allows himself that brief moment of relief and respite before remembering what he’s losing instead.

“The plants,” Yahaba says behind him, voice small, nearly lost in the noise of the storm. But Tooru doesn’t need to hear it. He already knows what Yahaba’s trying to convey.

His stomach drops, as if suddenly filled with all the rocks Futakuchi’s been collecting for his studies, as he thinks about the field just outside the door, where the little, green sprouts of their newest crop had just popped from the ground the day before. He’d been experimenting with them before Kuroo’s death, trying to find ways to make them more durable against the Carystus storms, but his new role as Commander had forced him to put the experiment on hold before it could get anywhere. The plants outside are just the same as all the ones before. And Tooru knows they won’t stand a chance against winds like these, let alone all the dirt and debris kicked up by the storm.

No, their crops are lost. Unsalvageable in the wake of this sudden storm. And that means their already short food supply has now been cut even shorter. At least until they can retill and replant and hopefully keep their plants alive long enough to harvest this time around.

Tooru groans and leans his forehead against the cool metal of the Hab wall. Just one more problem he needs figure out. One more responsibility added to the mountain of problems he already has to deal with. One more pound to add on top of the weight already crushing his chest.

“How much do we have left over from the last harvest?” he asks, because he has to know. Has to be aware of just how fucked they are.

“Not much,” Yahaba answers. “Maybe three weeks worth? Maybe less.”

Of course. Enough to get them through the harvest of the crops they’d already planted, but no more than that. Not enough to last through the harvest of a delayed crop. Especially if they’re about to be hit by an unexpected belt of storms, which Tooru knows could keep them locked inside the Hab for a week at least. Possibly up to a month, if the storms are really bad.

“We have the greenhouse, at least,” Tooru finally sighs. It won’t substitute for a real harvest, and they both know it, but it’s still a reliable source of food. And with the leftover packets of freeze-dried meals, it should be enough to get them through a month or two. They’ll just need to be careful. “We’ll have to ration, and tighten our belts, but we’ll survive.”

He just wishes these storms would stop popping out of nowhere! That would solve so many of his problems. They’re supposed to be in a season with mild weather, not getting attacked every other week with hurricane-force gales that throw them all into a panic, reminding them of the loss that’s still too painful to bear. Every gust of wind, every burst of lighting, every clang of debris against the Hab walls just reminds him of how dangerous and powerful these storms are. Forces him to realize that Kuroo’s last moments were spent in such an onslaught, blown this way and that until the piece of debris that ended his life was thrust into his chest by the winds. Tooru can’t even imagine what that must have been like without feeling his heart speed up and breathing grow shallow.

He screws his eyes shut now and focuses on taking long, steady breaths. Going into a panic attack now won’t help anyone, least of all himself. He needs to remain calm. Needs to remain in control. Even if everything else inside of him just wants to scream.

“Oikawa,” Yahaba says. His voice wavers, seeming almost hesitant, when he continues, “Tooru, the greenhouse is empty. We never got around to replanting everything after… after Kuroo’s death.”

“What?”

Yahaba looks terrified, shuffling his feet against the floor and glancing everywhere else but at Tooru. “You wanted me to focus on the crops outside and on trying to create a weather map, so I never had the chance. And you were always busy with those calls to JAXA…”

Tooru pushes away from the wall and hurries through the Hab, all but running down the halls to reach the greenhouse. He needs to see it for himself, to confirm what Yahaba’s saying with his own eyes, because there’s just no way what he’s saying is correct. It can’t be. The greenhouse is his sanctuary. Their crew’s saving grace. The safety net in case of situations like this. There’s no way Tooru would neglect it. It’s far too important.

But when he reaches the greenhouse, the only plants he’s greeted by are the pots of flowers that cover and surround his workbench. The rows of dirt that should be filled with little, green sprouts are brown and bare. Empty. Not a plant in sight.

“No,” he breathes. The exclamation nearly chokes him. He falls to his knees in the dirt and starts digging. Clawing away the soil in search of a seed or sprout or _something_ to show that what he’s seeing isn’t true. That he didn’t neglect their only backup plan and completely screw them all over. “No, no, no.”

He goes up and down both rows, scattering dirt in his desperation until their carefully cultivated planting ground is nearly indistinguishable from the rest of the floor. His arms from the elbows down are covered in dirt and sweat from all his digging, and he’s pretty sure his shirt and pants will never truly be clean again, and all of it is for naught. He doesn’t find a single sprout. Not even a seed.

The ground is empty. Their crops are gone. And it’s all his own fault.

How could Tooru let this happen? This was supposed to be his responsibility, not only as the team’s lead botanist, but also now as their Commander. He’s supposed to keep track of these things, and keep them away from disaster. Keep these situations from occurring. He thought he was ready. That he was prepared. That he could handle anything that got thrown his way, simply because he knew he needed to. But how can he do that when he can’t even keep track of his own plants? He’s let them all down: JAXA, his crew, Hajime, himself. He’s failed them all, and now he doesn’t know what to do.

What should he do? What should he do? What should he do?

He doesn’t have any clue how to bounce back from this and fix the mistake his own hands have created. If Hajime were here, he’d know what to do. Or he would at least be able to help brainstorm ideas with Tooru. But he’s not here, and Tooru can’t even reach him via video call now that his crew’s traveling at light speed. Tooru’s on his own here, and he feels every ounce of that responsibility pressing down on him, crushing him down into the very ground he’s supposed to be filling with life.

What should he do? What should he do?

Outside, the storm rages on without any care to Tooru’s plight or looming panic. It whips around the greenhouse, blowing the canvas walls back and forth with loud snaps that grate on Tooru’s nerves and set his heart racing. He curls his fingers in the dirt as if hoping the soil will help ground him and keep him from breaking under the pressure. But it’s no use.

It’s too much. Everything is too much. The storm, the crops, the expectations that were thrust upon him with Kuroo’s death. It’s all too much for him. Overwhelming him the same way WASP-12 is overwhelming its only orbiting planet— slowly consuming him and breaking him apart piece by piece until he finally crashes and burns.

How could he ever think he could handle this? It’s clear he can’t. He’s not cut out to be Commander. He never was. And all his boasts about being JAXA’s best botanist mean absolutely nothing now. He should have listened to Hajime all that time ago, when he cautioned Tooru about applying to the Mikaboshi program. If only he’d listened, he wouldn’t be in this position now. It was a mistake. All of it was a mistake. This mission. His place on the crew. Their attempts to make this planet sustainable. Their attempts to make a life here. Just mistake after mistake after mistake.

He glares at his workbench across the greenhouse, where the potted flowers sit mocking him. Sneering at him for his failures. Mocking him in that they survive where all the plants he really needs die. Laughing at his attempts to make this place a little more like home. How naive of him. How idiotic. As if a few pots of flowers could tame this wild place. As if Carystus could ever be his home.

Useless. They’re all useless, and Tooru can’t stand it. He storms across the greenhouse and pushes several pots off his workbench with a giant heave. They smash against the ground in a mess of dirt and leaves and ceramic. But there are still too many flowers left. So Tooru takes a pot and throws it across the room, watching it shatter against the ground before doing the same with another. And another. And another.

He throws the plants with all the anger he can muster, drowning out the sound of the storm with the sound of pots crashing. One after another after another. Every pot he can get his hands on. Every useless flower in this useless greenhouse. The _Delphinium cardinale_ , the _Myosotis_ , the _Helianthus annuus_ , the _Gladiolus_. Every plant he ever had the gall to grow, until there’s only one pot remaining. He picks it up, glancing briefly at the childish decorations scrawled all over the ceramic, and then stops. Slowly pulls it against his heaving chest, and then sinks down to the ground, cradling the small cactus in his arms as he collapses into the dirt.

And then, for the first time since leaving Earth, he breaks down and sobs.

 

* * *

 

The cactus is a new addition to his space station garden— a purely personal decision based on how _bored_ he got the last time he worked on the International Space Station, growing only cabbages and mushrooms and grass. If he’s going to be stuck up here for another six months, doing the same boring experiments with the same boring plants, then Tooru needs a little variety in his lab. A plant of his own choosing to do with as he likes. And there’s just something about this little cactus that endears him to it from the very start.

He likes having it there, sitting on one of the shelves in his tiny lab station, untouched by all the experiments happening around it. “Like having a little piece of home with me,” he tells Hajime, who snorts at him.

“Liar. I’ve been to your apartment. There’s not a single cactus there, even in that porch garden of yours.”

“Well, not _yet_. But I will when we get home.” He lifts the cactus from its shelf and cradles it lovingly in his arms, cooing down at it with just enough tenderness to make Hajime gag. “This baby’s getting the place of honor on my bedside table,” he says. “I want it to be the first thing I see every morning. I need to make sure it has a name before we head back. I don’t want it feeling neglected, after all.”

“Why? Do you name all your plants?”

“Yes, of course. Why wouldn’t I?”

Hajime snorts and leans against Tooru’s work bench, arms crossed over his chest. Tooru looks up and finds amusement hidden in the tiny wrinkles at the corner of Hajime’s eyes, which are filled with so much warmth it makes Tooru’s chest ache. He looks away again quickly and tries to calm his heart— an attempt that fails as soon as he feels Hajime’s hand touch the top of his head and ruffle his hair.

“Idiot,” he teases. “Only you would think to name your plants. It’s not like they care either way, you know.”

Tooru huffs and turns up his nose with disdain. Or as close to disdain as he can get with the waves of fondness filling his chest and tying his stomach in knots. “Excuse you. Which one of us is the botanist here?” he asks, trying to ignore the weight of Hajime’s hand still in his hair, or how its warmth seems to trickle from Hajime’s fingers into Tooru’s scalp and down his spine, straight to his heart. “Plants have feelings too. Even if you’re too much of a brute to recognize them.”

“This brute flew you and your space plants up to this nice, safe lab of yours,” Hajime responds with a gentle flick to Tooru’s forehead. “Be a little more grateful.”

“A prickly brute,” Tooru laughs. He stands from his chair and dances out of Hajime’s reach, all the way to the other side of the space station’s laboratory, where he grins at Hajime with all the mischievous innocence he can muster. “Maybe I should name my cactus ‘Iwa-chan,’” he says, holding up the ceramic pot in his hands so that the round, green body of the cactus covers Hajime’s face in Tooru’s vision, “since he’s just as small and prickly.”

“Hey!”

Tooru laughs and dodges away when Hajime comes after him. He spins away from Hajime’s outstretched hands, feeling light on his feet in the reduced, artificial gravity of the space station, and bolts out the laboratory door, cactus still clutched between his two hands. Hajime hollers after him. His voice echoes down the long hallway to the crew quarters in a mixture of outrage and amusement, and Tooru beams.

He loves this. Loves getting to rile Hajime up. Loves the exhilaration of a playful chase. Loves the feeling of his heart in his throat from all the excitement, and from an emotion he doesn’t yet dare to name.

What Tooru loves most of all though, is the simple fact that he’s able to do this. That he’s able to spend this time and share these experiences with his best friend, even out in the cold vacuum of space. Hajime’s presence makes all the months spent in the space station, cramped in a laboratory shared with five other scientists, staring out at the same, dark void of space day after day, easier to bear. Like Hajime is the sun, from which Tooru’s world survives and thrives, soaking up every bit of life-giving light without ever growing tired of the taste.

“Well, isn’t that a thought,” he says to his cactus later, mulling over the feeling in the safety of his small, private bedroom. “I don’t want him to leave.”

It’s a desire he’s long acknowledged and accepted in the back of his subconscious, but never really thought about until now. This strange, turbulent mixture of possession and longing that bubbles up inside him whenever he looks Hajime’s way.

He’s never felt this way about anyone before. Not about his family, not about his other friends, not even about his long string of former lovers who, though all very nice in their own, unique ways, could never capture his interest for longer than two or three months. Hajime has been his friend for over two years, and yet Tooru still finds himself intrigued. Fascinated by every tick and quirk and expression, no matter how often he sees them. Longing to learn even more, to see every expression Hajime can make, like a man in a desert dreaming of an oasis.

Why is that? What is is about Hajime that draws Tooru so? That fills him with butterflies and stardust whenever he meets Hajime’s dark eyes?

Why is it that when Tooru tries to picture his future, he can only imagine waking up to Hajime’s wild bedhead and lazy smile every morning for the rest of his life?

“Oh, Iwa-chan,” he whispers into the silence of his room, tracing the rim of his cactus’s pot with the tip of his index finger. “Iwa-chan, I think I’m falling for you.”

 

* * *

 

Sol 992  
Log #535

I wasn’t prepared. That much is clear. I wasn’t ready to handle all the responsibilities of being Commander, and now we’re paying the price.

By my calculations, we have about two and a half weeks worth of food left over from the last crop, and about one week’s worth of freeze-dried meals. That’s about 24 or 25 days of food. We can probably stretch that out to 30 or 40-something days with careful rationing, which I guess is good because we won’t be able to harvest anything until that point anyways. The mizuna and radishes will mature in about four weeks, right when we run out of food. And that’s all we’ll have to live on for the next few months until the rest of the plants mature. Not exactly the most appetizing or ideal situation to find ourselves in, but at least we’ll have food of some sort. Beggars can’t be choosers, right?

We’ve resowed and replanted everything in the greenhouse, where the winds can’t touch them. It’s my fault the plants weren’t already there in the first place, but I’ve learned from my mistakes. I’ll just have to cut down on my video calls with JAXA somehow and focus more on the plants and keeping my crew fed. JAXA will understand. They’ll have to, otherwise we’ll just keep running into these situations. That’s the last thing any of us want.  
  
I need to find a way to make the plants hardier as well. The storms here are too unpredictable for me to ignore that project any longer. We need crops that can withstand these winds, and we need them soon. We only have three more years until the next crew shows up. We’ll need to double our food supply before they arrive.

I don’t even know where to start with all that, but I’ll figure it out somehow. I have to. I’ll make this work if it’s the last thing I do.

 

* * *

 

The space station that will take them from Earth to Carystus is slightly larger than the shuttle they launched in, boasting an actual mess hall, a common room, an observation deck, a large and fully-stocked cargo hold, and, most impressive of all, individual rooms for each of them to sleep in. The rooms are tiny, with only enough space for a bed and a locker for their clothes, but it’s the last time they’ll have such a luxury for a very long time, so Tooru savors it. Takes advantage of every moment he can to relax in the silence and privacy of his room, especially as he realizes that, despite its larger size, the space station feels just as crowded as the shuttle, his crewmates filling every inch of space with their energy and noise.

He tries to be patient. Reminds himself what Kuroo had said about their antics being a coping mechanism, about it helping them to retain some normality after up-ending their entire lives to journey to another solar system. But no matter how much he repeats it to himself, he can’t ignore the noise and the constant, alien press of their presence filling the space craft. Nor the way it’s making him slowly lose his mind.

It grates at him, though he knows that on a good day he’s nearly just as bad. But it’s not a good day for him right now. He hasn’t had a good day since before they launched from Tanegashima. And he probably won’t have what he considers a ‘good day’ for a long time yet. Not until they land on Carystus and he can finally get some space and breathing room, at the very least. Maybe not even until he knows that Hajime’s flight has launched and is headed out to join them.

So when Bokuto ends up dragging him out of his room to socialize with the rest of the crew a few weeks into their flight, Tooru thinks he has a valid reason for the irritation that fills him and pulls his mouth into a deep scowl.

“Let me go before I cut your arm off at the elbow,” he snaps, voice dark and deep with intent. Rather than discouraging Bokuto, however, Tooru’s statement only makes the pilot laugh and continue pulling him through the hallways to the ship’s common room, hand tight around Tooru’s wrist.

“Gonna use me for one of your science experiments?” he jokes, grinning at Tooru without even a hint of concern. “See if you can make a human-plant hybrid or something?”

Tooru’s scowl deepens. “Perhaps,” he growls. He’s not above trying it. He can already see all the grants and articles and prestige that would come if his experiment were to be successful. The only thing stopping him is the fact that he doesn’t have anything to cut with, and doesn’t possess enough brutal strength to simply rip Bokuto’s arm off.

Also the fact that Bokuto, annoying as he might be, is also their pilot, and he kind of needs both arms in order to land their ship when they reach Carystus. Unfortunately.

As usual, Bokuto pays him no mind and simply goes about his business like Tooru hasn’t just threatened the well-being of one of his limbs. At his faster-than-should-be-allowed pace, they reach the common room in no time, where Tooru sees all the rest of his crew, with the exception of Akaashi, gathered around Kuroo as he demonstrates a strange array of acrobatic tricks in the low gravity of the space station. Akaashi is there in the room too, of course, but is sitting in the corner of the room, reading something on his data pad and minding his own business. Tooru decides to join him as soon as the door hisses shut behind them and Bokuto releases his wrist.

Akaashi spares him a single glance of acknowledgment, then returns to his reading. Silent. Self-involved. Completely different from the rest of the crew.

“How can you stand them?” Tooru asks, because he doesn’t understand. He’s seen the way Akaashi interacts with Bokuto and Kuroo during the past year of training, has known about their dynamic for even longer thanks to the astronaut corps gossip-filled grapevine, but now that he’s actually living with the three and experiencing their personalities almost every hour of every day, it just doesn’t make sense. The patience, the fondness, the quiet devotion in the face of their exuberance; none of that makes sense to him.

Akaashi looks up from his data pad for a moment, glancing between Tooru and the two idiots attempting to one-up each other on the other side of the room, then shrugs.

“I don’t,” he answers, straightforward but vague at the same time. “Not always.”

“But most of the time you do.”

“Yes,” Akaashi confirms, and he says it so confidently, so effortlessly, that Tooru can only wrinkle his nose and ask, “ _Why?_ ”

Why them? Why when everything they do seems to leave chaos in their wakes? Why would Akaashi— quiet, calm, logical Akaashi— choose to tolerate that time and time again, like a star pulling planets into orbit?

And it _is_ a choice, Tooru knows. He’s seen the long-suffering looks Akaashi sends their way now and then. Has heard stories from the younger astronauts, the ones who trained with Akaashi, of how Akaashi will get fed up with Bokuto or Kuroo and shut them out for days on end. How he’ll ignore them completely and leave them to their own devices, letting them fall apart without him there to pick up the pieces.

That, Tooru understands. The shutting out part. He would have done the same if he were in Akaashi’s shoes and had to put up with Bokuto and Kuroo’s nonsense pretty much all of the time. He’s not entirely sure he _won’t_ do it by the time they reach Carystus, even knowing he needs to rely on them for certain aspects of their mission.

What Tooru _doesn’t_ understand is why Akaashi keeps coming back. Why he returns, despite the way they get on his nerves.

“Maybe it’s because they need me,” Akaashi answers. He looks over at Kuroo and Bokuto again, who have somehow switched from trying to outdo each other to attempting even more dangerous two-man tricks instead, and gives them a rare smile. “Maybe it’s because I need them too.”

Tooru’s struck dumb by that thought, but even more by the expression on Akaashi’s face. He knows that smile. Recognizes the affection and helplessness in the gentle curve of the lips, and in the softness of his eyes. Recognizes it because it’s the same type of expression Hajime wears whenever they’re alone together and he thinks Tooru isn’t looking. That sort of quiet wonder of staring at something your entire universe revolves around.

The irritation Tooru was feeling drains right out of him, vanishing into the void. His shoulders relax, and there’s a little spark of warmth right inside his chest.

Maybe he does understand after all.

 

* * *

 

 _I will be there_ , is all that Hajime’s message says in reply to Tooru’s request that he be present for the first round of video calls, but it’s enough to send Tooru’s heart into overdrive and make his hands start shaking.

He’s a little bit afraid, if he’s being honest. There’s no date to the message. No telling when Hajime replied. Tooru sent his request before they went to light speed— a last-ditch effort to keep Hajime in his life after their earlier disagreement— so if Hajime responded soon after, that would have been almost five years ago. Five years can change a lot of things. Five years can mean an agreement from before holds absolutely no weight now. Five years can mean that Tooru’s too late.

He’s scared, but he goes to the kitchen with the rest of the crew that day anyways and waits. Watches Kuroo enter the adjacent common room first for his half hour of private video conversation, door shut tight between them to block out any sounds, and sticks around to see if he’ll eventually get called in for his own time or not.

If Hajime doesn’t show, then Tooru won’t have a call waiting for him at all. He won’t have anyone there to talk to him or update him on how things have changed. Hajime was the only one he requested for the first video call after landing on Carystus. First call since coming out of light speed, actually. Not even his parents know about this call, and neither do the rest of his friends. Just Hajime. Only Hajime. The only person Tooru wants to see.

He taps his fingers together nervously as he waits, unable to keep still with all the worry and excitement running through his veins. The rest of his crew is no better. They’re all a little on edge, from Futakuchi bouncing his leg as he sits in a corner to Bokuto pacing up and down the length of the room with rapid steps. And for good reason.

It’s been five years for the people back on Earth, while no more than two weeks have passed for them. What all has changed in that time?

They all get even more restless when Kuroo finally emerges and glances around the room. He looks like he’s been crying. His cheeks are damp and his eyes are slightly red, and that just drops a ball of lead straight into Tooru’s stomach, where it sinks further and further as Kuroo locks eyes with Bokuto and says through a thick voice, “They’re waiting for you.”

Bokuto needs no more than that. He bounds past Kuroo and into the common room, and then the door shuts behind him and Tooru is left waiting once again. Only this time, he’s even more nervous.

Tooru will be next in line if he has a call at all. If he doesn’t, then Akaashi will be called in next and Tooru will have to confront the reality that his relationship with Hajime, however deep it once was, is now over. Done with for good. Either way, he’ll receive his answer in about half an hour. He’ll know his fate as soon as Bokuto returns through that door.

Tooru suddenly feels the need to pace, much like Bokuto was doing earlier. The anxiety of waiting and not knowing is driving him insane.

He’s not quite sure what he’s going to do if Hajime doesn’t show up. There’s so much he wants to say to Hajime, so much he wishes he had said before the jump the light speed— things like “I’m sorry” and “I miss you” and “I love you.” He wants to see Hajime’s face again, to see that Hajime’s still waiting, to know that he didn’t just throw away the best thing in his life for a chance to live on another world. This would all be for nothing if Hajime chose not to wait for him. Not even Carystus is worth losing Hajime. Nothing is worth losing Hajime, in Tooru’s opinion.

It’s excruciating, having to wait and watch the time tick slowly by. Every second seems longer than the second before. Every minute feels like an hour. He tries not to let it get to him, tries not to think about how every second brings him closer to either complete joy or utter defeat, but he fails stupendously. His mind runs circles around the “what ifs” and “maybes” he’s trying so desperately to ignore until he’s reduced to nothing more than a jittery, anxious wreck.

This isn’t how he wants to greet Hajime. If he even gets to greet Hajime at all.

Nearly twenty-seven minutes in, and almost at his breaking point, the door to the common room finally slides open as Bokuto walks out. Tooru’s head shoots up to stare at him as if by staring enough Tooru will be able to see inside the pilot’s head and know just who he’ll be calling for. It’s the moment of truth for him. The pivot upon which his entire universe balances.

Tooru or Akaashi? Tooru or Akaashi? Who is it going to be?

“Hey, Oika—”

Tooru is up and out of his seat before Bokuto can even finish saying his name.

He runs across the kitchen and into the common room, elation thrumming through him because _Hajime is waiting for him_. Hajime is waiting for him. It’s been five years for Hajime, and he still came. He’s still there, waiting on Tooru.

Tooru sprints across the room and all but throws himself into the chair before the video screen. Hajime laughs, and the sound reaches Tooru before he has a chance to even look at the video feed, filling him with joy and warmth and excitement, because Hajime is _actually_ there. Hajime wants to see and talk to him and maybe to fix the jumbled mess they left their relationship in before Tooru went to lightspeed. And it’s only been a few weeks for Tooru since he’s last talked to Hajime, but he’s still missed him _so much._

He’s ready to say as much to Hajime, looking up at the screen with the words already forming on his tongue. But then he actually focuses on the video and the words freeze in his mouth. His breath catches in his throat.

“Hey,” Hajime says, giving Tooru a very familiar, warm smile on an older and somewhat unfamiliar face. “You haven’t changed a bit.”

 

* * *

 

Yahaba finds him and Akaashi huddled together in the common room of the Hab, talking over plans for the crew’s next outing. Really, Tooru should be discussing this stuff with Bokuto as well, as Bokuto’s still technically higher in the chain of command than anyone else save Tooru, but with Bokuto still getting back on his feet after what happened, there’s really only so much he can contribute. Which leaves Tooru and Akaashi to figure it all out instead, down to the very last detail.

The table they’re hunched over is covered in maps and plans, which Yahaba slams his hands on top of as he comes bursting into their meeting. “Oikawa,” he says, tone breathless, face flushed and a little bit manic, “Oikawa, you have to come outside right now. Right. Now.”

He grabs Tooru’s arm and tugs, and Tooru is too surprised to do anything but follow after him, heart pounding painfully against his ribcage in panic.

What is it that he needs to see? Are the plants dying again? Is there another storm rolling in? Is it something else? All he can think of as Yahaba tugs him from the Hab and into the sunlight are things that could have gone wrong, because there are just so many, and a good majority of them have already been experienced. Multiple times, in some cases. He’s not optimistic enough to consider that they won’t happen again. That one of them hasn’t already happened. But which one? What sort of crisis is happening that has gotten Yahaba more worked up than Tooru’s ever seen him be?

He winces as the sunlight hits his face, far brighter and more intense than any of the fluorescent lights they have in the Hab. He lifts a hand to shield his eyes and squints at the field Yahaba’s dragging him towards, but sees nothing wrong with it. The field, filled with all their various produce, is lush and green and thriving. There’s no sign of disaster or death anywhere amongst the healthy plants. And, when he looks to the sky, he also doesn’t see the thick, heavy line of an oncoming storm headed their way. The day is sunny and clear. The wind is still. It’s perfect.

Yahaba leads him to the far edge of the field, where they’ve planted the wheat in long rows. The smell of baking bread hits him as they walk closer. He breathes in deeply, savoring the familiar smell, and doesn’t even notice Yahaba let go of his wrist and walk into the field. Not until Yahaba calls to him and waves him over.

“Look at this, Oikawa,” he says when Tooru comes up beside him. He bends the stalk just a bit so Tooru can see the seeds. Can notice the small changes in color from green to golden that says the wheat is beginning to mature and will soon be ready to harvest. Tooru sucks in a sharp breath. Beside him, Yahaba beams. “It’s never lasted this long before.”

Tooru nods because Yahaba’s right. The wheat has never been able to withstand even normal levels of Carystus winds, snapping under the constant bending and swaying before getting a chance to start maturing. But here this batch remains, still growing strong despite previous failures. A sign that he and Yahaba might be onto something. Might have found the key. And if that’s true, then… well, everything will change then. They’ll have their solution. They’ll be able to survive and colonize.

It it’s true, then maybe Tooru has finally done something right.

 

* * *

 

“He’s different than I expected,” Tooru admits to Daichi over video feed one night when he can’t sleep and Daichi is in charge of the mission control room. “Older. More mellow?” He holds a piece of wild grass he plucked earlier from the field outside the Hab, twirling it between his fingers and watching the flowering head spin in dizzying circles. Similar to how his thoughts have been reeling since that video call with Hajime, and seeing the visual proof of just how much time has passed. “I mean, I knew the theory. I knew he’d get older before I did. But it’s still… weird? Actually seeing it.”

“I’m older too, aren’t I? But you don’t seem to have a problem talking to me,” Daichi points out, to which Tooru waves a hand in dismissal.

“That’s different,” he tries to explain. “We haven’t known each other nearly as long. I don’t know your face the way I know his.”

He hadn’t been prepared for it. Not really. In his mind’s eye, he still saw Hajime as the age he’d been when Tooru left. He’d still kept his smooth face and bright eyes and teasing smirk. The Hajime he was met with on that video screen was similar, but with more wrinkles around the eyes, and with a softer edge to his smiles that Tooru didn’t know what to do with. He still doesn’t know what to do with it. How to handle the differences between the Hajime he knew and the Hajime he now must get to know.

It’s like a first meeting all over again. Tooru doesn’t like that. He’s too used to knowing everything about Hajime. He misses the comfortable intimacy and understanding. Doesn’t want to have to start all over again.

He runs a hand through his hair, brushing back the wayward locks and tiny cowlicks. He’s more of a mess than usual. Hasn’t really slept or eaten in a few days. And his hair seems to be in a permanent state of disarray that he can’t find the energy to combat. Oh, what a sight he must be, driven to exhaustion by his own doubt. If only Hajime could see him now. He’d surely regret wasting so much time waiting for Tooru.

Sighing, he tips his head back to stare at the Hab’s ceiling. The shiny, grey metal of the building reflects his image back to him all distorted and blurry. Kind of the exact way he’s feeling right now. “I don’t really know what I was thinking he’d be like,” Tooru softly admits, “but I wasn’t expecting him to be so mature. Like he’s always been the mature one, but not like this. I just… I’m not sure how to talk with him anymore. And it’s weird.” A mild way of putting it, but Tooru can’t find a better way to describe the experience.

It’s a little unfair, he thinks. Hajime’s five years older now, with five years’ worth of memories to share. Five years of memories that have changed him. Five years that Tooru had no part in. Tooru has so much to catch up on before he can even claim to be close to this new Hajime. So much he needs to learn and discover, while Hajime already knows everything about Tooru. It’s not like Tooru could change all that much in a span of two or three weeks. At least not as much as he would over the course of five years. It makes Tooru feel ridiculously inadequate. Like he’s failing a test he should have studied for.

Maybe it was just him though. Maybe he’s over-thinking this whole thing. Hajime looked comfortable enough during their conversation. Happy, even. His smile was warm and patient, and he went out of his way to explain whatever events Tooru missed and seemed confused about— which was, quite honestly, a lot. Tooru never realized how much could happen in a span of five years.

Tooru sighs. “I don’t know,” he says as he looks back at Daichi’s image on the screen, “it’s just odd not knowing anything about him anymore. Like talking to a whole different person. I mean, you’re in a relationship, right? How would you feel if you went away for a week and then returned to find they’ve somehow spent five years living a life without you in it?”

“ _Was_ in a relationship,” Daichi corrects gently. “We broke up a long time ago.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t…”

Daichi shakes his head. “It’s fine,” he says. “Things just didn’t fall together. We were both too focused on our careers. I mean, I guess we could have made it work if we really wanted to, but…” He shrugs, but the movement’s slow and heavy. Maybe from video lag. Maybe from regret. It’s hard for Tooru to tell, even as Daichi adds, “I think every relationship comes down to a choice. Whether you’re willing to hang on despite everything, or if you’d rather just let go. We both chose to let go.”

He looks pointedly at Tooru, who averts his gaze and leans back in his chair, trying to ignore the gentle prodding of Daichi’s words. After all, what he’s saying makes sense, as much as Tooru hates to accept it. But he’s at a crossroads with Hajime. A point where he has to make a decision. Has to figure out what it is he wants. What he thinks is worth it. What he won’t regret.

On one hand, he could persevere in his relationship with Hajime. He could deal with the awkwardness they seem to be caught in and try to relearn everything about this man Tooru once knew better than himself. And then to do it all again when Hajime’s crew lands on Carystus, after Tooru has lived five whole years without Hajime at his side.

It’d be a huge risk, he knows that now. Seeing how Hajime’s changed over the years has made him realize, in a way he never had before his own ship had launched, just how much of a difference five years can make. He’s not going to be the same person when it’s all said and done, and a part of him, deep down inside, keeps thinking that the person he might become won’t be a person Hajime will want to be with. And that… that would kill Tooru. If they went through all of this, if Tooru fell in love all over again right now, only to be rejected in the end. He couldn’t do it.

But at the same time… at the same time, he’s pretty sure it would kill him to say goodbye to Hajime right now without even giving this a chance. Without at least _trying_. There’s too much left unfinished between them, brought to a halt by that one conversation they shared before Tooru went into lightspeed. And Tooru hasn’t yet told Hajime everything he wants to say. Hasn’t had enough time with him. Hasn’t done nearly enough. And taking the risk scares him, but not taking the risk and losing all they could have been might scare him even more.

In the end, all he knows is that he’s not ready to give up and let Hajime go.

Maybe that’s all the answer he needs.

 

* * *

 

Sol 1,225  
Log #602

I think we’ve done it! We’ve figured out what it takes to keep these plants alive! Yahaba and I are keeping a close watch on the new field of plants, and they seem to be flourishing. We haven’t encountered any problems yet.

Of course, the altered plants haven’t yet gone up against a true, full-blown Carystus storm, so we can’t say for sure that this will be the final solution to our problems, but so far they’ve lasted through the heavy winds that used to kill all our crops. If they don’t survive a storm, then at least we know we’re on the right track. We have the right gene narrowed down; it’s just the task of adjusting it to where it needs to be now.

I have a lot of confidence in these plants, and I’m really excited for the moment when I get to report our success to JAXA! With this, we’ll be able to stop worrying about our food supplies! And just in time for the arrival of the second crew too.

 

* * *

 

Tooru keeps a calendar on his work bench in the Hab greenhouse to keep track of the days and the few Earth-based events that still matter to him, like his parents’ birthdays, both of which he circles in red on their respective calendar pages. Also Christmas, and Takahiro and Issei’s birthdays, and Autumnal Equinox Day. And one more, circled and starred with every color pen Tooru owns: the date of Mikaboshi II’s launch.

“Just a few days away,” Hajime says during their weekly video call. He smiles, all warm and soft like the glow of a candle, and leans forward. Tooru leans forward too and touches his fingers to the screen, wishing more than anything to be there on the other side. To be waiting alongside Hajime instead of here in this greenhouse, between the feathery leaves of their young _Howea forsteriana_ and the bright red flowers of the _Delphinium cardinale_.

“A few days until launch,” Tooru corrects. “You still have a few months to go before you get here.”

Hajime waves his hand dismissively. “A few months is nothing.”

And, for Hajime, Tooru supposes that’s true. Compared to the five— almost six— years of waiting Hajime’s already had to do, a few months must seem like nothing at all. They’re simply a tiny blip at the end of a very long delay. A long separation Tooru is now staring in the face. He glances at the calendar again, at how close Hajime’s launch date now is, and feels his stomach twist into a knot of dread.

Is this how Hajime felt back then? Suffocated by all those years of waiting? Is this the dread Hajime felt while Tooru excitedly babbled about going to light speed and finally reaching Carystus? No wonder Hajime snapped at him back then. How did he even stand this?

“Tooru?” Hajime asks, voice soft, hesitant, because of course he’s noticed there’s something wrong. Hajime knows him too well not to see the tension building in Tooru’s shoulders and the forced smile across his face, even after five years apart. But then, Tooru’s not the one who’s changed in those five years. Not yet. His time is still yet to come.

Thinking about that just makes him feel worse.

“I think I understand how you felt back then,” Tooru admits, and rubs the back of his neck. He glances to the side, looking at the _Howea forsteriana_ and stack of empty, ceramic pots beside it and basically at anything _except_ for Hajime, because admitting to this makes him feel somewhat like Mars’s moon, Phobos— fragile and tenuous, like he might break apart at any second. “Before I went to light speed, I mean. I get it now.”

He understands the dread of separation, knowing how many years he’ll have to wait before seeing Hajime’s face again. Before hearing his voice, or even reading his words. Before having any contact at all, because light speed is not kind and won’t allow anything through. All Tooru can see now are the years stretching on ahead of him without end, hundreds of days blurring into each other in a single line of time that Tooru will have to endure without Hajime to support him through. And it leaves him feeling at something of a loss.

Tooru doesn’t know how to survive anymore without Hajime there to push him forward. The heavy listlessness he felt during those few, short months of separation between Mars and Carystus are proof enough of that. There’s no way he’ll be able to go five whole years without so much as a word from Hajime.

That might just be a problem.

“How did you do it?” he asks. His voice is thick with desperation and fear, and it probably sounds more than a little pathetic, but for once Tooru can’t bring himself to care. He looks at Hajime with wide, pleading eyes— his puppy-dog eyes, as Hajime once dubbed them— and asks again, “How did you get through those five years?”

Hajime sighs. He runs a hand through his short hair, from temple to nape, and then offers Tooru a thin smile that looks more painful than anything else. “Honestly,” he says, “I didn’t wait for a while. It was too painful. So I spent those first two years trying to forget you.” He laughs, short and soft, but not unhappy, like laughing at some private joke. “Clearly that plan didn’t work though.”

Tooru’s glad it didn’t. Glad to still have Hajime in his life, for whatever reason. “What changed your mind?”

“You did.” Hajime smiles openly and honestly at him, far more genuine than just a few moments earlier. His eyes are warm, folded into happy little crescent moons. And that’s one difference between past Hajime and now that Tooru’s learned to appreciate; this Hajime is more willing to let his emotions show, and right now his entire being is radiating love and affection. So much so that it makes Tooru’s heart constrict and flutter beneath his ribcage. “You were everywhere in my life. In our apartment, at JAXA, with Issei and Takahiro, in my own thoughts. It was impossible to ignore you. And after a while, I just accepted that I’d always want you in my life. Then it was easy.”

“Easy?”

“Easy,” Hajime confirms. He leans his cheek in one hand and reaches toward his camera with the other, waiting for Tooru to reciprocate and press his own fingers to Hajime’s against the screen before adding, “After all, every day was just another day closer to you.”

 

* * *

 

“Hey,” Bokuto softly greets as he sits across from Tooru in the common room. Tooru glances up in surprise.

“Hey,” he says in return, and gives Bokuto a quick once-over. It’s been a while since Bokuto’s volunteered to come out of his room on his own, and his appearance shows it. His hair, usually bleached and styled in erratic spikes, is pulled back into a messy half-bun that’s more black than white, and there are dark, exhausted bags beneath his eyes that stand out starkly against his sallow skin. Tooru wonders if he’s even gotten any sleep at all recently. “How are you doing?”

Bokuto gives a humorless laugh. “I’ve been better.”

Tooru nods and turns back to the paperwork spread across the low table between them, because what else can he expect Boktuo to say? Kuroo is dead. Boktuo’s best friend is dead. And it’s going to take Bokuto more than a few short months to come to terms with that.

Idly, he flips through a few of the things JAXA sent him— forms relating to field excursions and lab experiments and utility maintenance for the Hab— and lets a blanket of silence fall over the room. The others are out collecting samples somewhere, so it’s just him and Bokuto in the Hab, and, worried though he is about how Bokuto’s handling things, Tooru doesn’t want to overwhelm him with too many questions or comments. He knows how Bokuto can get. Not as well as Kuroo once did, but he still knows.

Bokuto is uncharacteristically quiet and still in his seat. There’s no tapping feet or fidgeting hands, just stiff, motionless posture and blank eyes, much like a statue. It makes him look small. Where all of his uncontrollable energy used to fill the entire room, now there’s just nothing, and it shrinks him from the giant Tooru’s always perceived him to be into a little pebble. A tiny, cold husk of a man sitting in a chair much too big for him.

It’s disconcerting, to say the least. And it worries Tooru more than he’s willing to admit.

He sighs and looks back at his papers. There’s a form in his hand for one of Futakuchi’s newest experiment ideas— something involving the reptilian creatures they found on Carystus a while back and observing how they digest the native fauna or such. Tooru’s not really sure. But as Commander, he needs to sign off on the idea before Futakuchi can run it past JAXA and get their approval. It’s a good system for labs set up on planets like Mars, where scientists come and go like the wind, hauling idea after idea along with them. Those labs need the filter of a Commander in order to keep experiment proposals from piling up like paper mountains in the JAXA offices. But out here, with how few of them there are, the system seems a waste. Unnecessary. An extra step where there really doesn’t need to be.

Tooru follows procedure and signs it anyways though, knowing better than to question the higher ups on this. They’ll conduct things as they want, and Tooru just needs to follow along. He has more important things to worry about, after all. Let JAXA deal with deciding which experiments are worth pursuing and which are not instead.

“Experiment forms?” Bokuto questions when Tooru signs the paper in his hands with a little too much vigor. Tooru glances up and sees Bokuto quirk a tiny grin— the first Tooru’s seen from him in months. “Tetsurou always hated those too. He’d rant about them for hours.”

“Really?”

Bokuto nods. “He thought they were pointless. I think he tore a few of them up one time,” he says, and laughs to himself at the memory. Tooru smiles and sets down his pen, glad to see Bokuto acting so positive after so many months of mourning.

“Is that what happened to my soil experiment form?”

“Probably,” Bokuto answers with a short laugh, which soon melts away into puckered brows and the thin press of lips. He stares down at the hands folded in his lap, contemplative. One of his thumbs taps a quick rhythm against the back of his other hand, and while Tooru doesn’t like that Bokuto’s closing himself off again, he’s glad to at least see Bokuto fidgeting again. Not deathly still like he’d been earlier, but actually somewhat engaged in the world, even if it’s in a negative way. “You know,” Bokuto starts, pauses to swallow thickly, then tries again, “you know, Tetsurou, Keiji, and I weren’t really sure about coming on this mission in the first place.”

“Oh?” That surprises Tooru a bit. Bokuto and Kuroo have always been ones to jump at the chance for an adventure, usually dragging Akaashi reluctantly along behind them. Tooru would have thought they’d be the first ones to sign up for this sort of mission.

“I mean, it’s _space_ ,” Bokuto says. “It’s a giant, black void that wants to kill us. It’s dangerous even on a normal mission. And this isn’t a normal mission.” He shakes his head and leans forward, his plastic chair squeaking with the movement. He teeters forward in his chair, then back, as if balancing on the edge of something, while the tapping of his thumb against his hand increased in pace.

Tooru hesitates. He wants to say something, to ask if Bokuto’s alright, to ask what he’s thinking so hard about, but feels those words in his hand like a scalpel, ready to cut Bokuto open and pull out everything Tooru was never meant to see. And that’s not how this should go. He’s not here to ogle at Bokuto’s pain, or to callously force him deal with it. He’s here to support a crewmate in a time of need, whatever that means. He’s here to support a friend.

“Do you regret joining?” he asks instead, because he thinks that might be easier for Bokuto to answer than all of the other questions his mind wants answers to, and because he knows Bokuto can use it to change topics if he really doesn’t want to talk. Tooru will respect that decision if that’s what it becomes.

Bokuto doesn’t take that route, however. Doesn’t back away from the topic like he would have just a few days ago.

He simply shakes his head again and says, “We knew the risks when we signed up. We knew this might happen at some point and decided it was worth it. And even though it hurts, even though—” he closes his eyes, takes a deep breath “— even though it feels like half of me is gone and will probably never mend, this is what we wanted. It’s what Tetsurou wanted. I can’t regret that.”

“You’re stronger than I am then,” Tooru says, thinking of Hajime and how upset he was about not seeing Hajime for five years. All the fights, all the conflict, all the tears. And it makes him feel a bit pathetic, because that’s nothing compared to what Bokuto’s dealing with now. It’s not even close. Tooru can’t even begin to imagine it.

Across from him, Bokuto sighs through his nose. He rubs a hand over his face, then reaches out to pat Tooru on the knee, as if understanding the shame Tooru feels comparing their two situations. As if saying that it’s fine. That they’re in this together.

“We’ll be alright,” Bokuto says. “It hurts now, but eventually it’ll get better. We just have to keep going.”

Tooru sincerely hopes he’s right.

 

* * *

 

Tooru’s stomach drops at the sight of dark clouds billowing up over the horizon. They’re fast approaching, as most of Carystus’s sudden storms are, and they care little for Tooru’s mental chants of _not now, not now, please not now_ as he stands beside his field of young plants and watches the clouds come rolling across the plains, straight to the Hab.

“Get inside,” he tells the others. “Drop what you’re doing, and get in the Hab.” Because he’s Commander now, and he’ll be damned if he loses another crew member to the planet’s storms. And it’s not like they’re working on anything of vital importance anyways. Just some repair work to the two rovers that they can easily pick back up once the storm passes. Nothing worth risking anyone’s life for.

The only thing Tooru’s worried about are the plants. None of them are mature enough to pick just yet, so there’s no way Tooru can save even a little of this batch of crops. He’ll have to just leave them to the wind’s mercy, and trust that the modifications he and Yahaba made will be enough to keep them alive. At least they’ll be able to see how successful they were in adapting their Earth plants to Carystus. Tooru supposes that’s one good thing to come out of this storm.

Tooru waits until he feels the shift in the wind, the short gusts of metallic wind whipping around him and rustling the plants in the field. He waits until he sees the shadows of the clouds rolling across the land, sees them block out the sun, and then he turns and follows his crew inside the Hab, where they sit huddled around Akaashi’s desktop as usual.

“Looks like it’ll be pretty mild,” Yahaba notes from the information on Akaashi’s desktop. “It might not do too much damage if it stays like this. It’s about the strength of a rain storm back on Earth.”

“That’s rare,” Tooru says, because in the past five years on Carystus, they’ve never had a storm so mild. It’s usually hurricane-force winds or nothing at all. A change like this is unprecedented. Lucky, but unusual.

Yahaba shrugs. “Alpha Centauri A and B are currently on a receding trajectory, in terms of orbit. The distance from B is probably affecting the strength of the storms. We’ll probably be getting more of these in the future.”

“Let’s hope so” Akaashi says, and Tooru nods in agreement.

If what Yahaba’s saying is true, it’ll be a stroke of luck. A heaven-sent miracle for the plants in their field of crops. Not just in this batch, but also all the other batches after it, where all the modifications he and Yahaba have made will take root and become a natural part of their genetics. Become something that can evolve and adapt to the environment as the years go on, so that by the time the storms regain strength, in about a hundred years or so when the binary suns’ orbits bring them back together, the plants from Earth will be able to survive just as well as those from Carystus.

They won’t need to worry about food. Not for years and years and years. Maybe never again.

He lets that wash over him for a moment. The realization that he’s accomplished what he’s set out to do— what he’s been working on without rest for the past five years. It’s a heady sensation. He doesn’t even notice when wind picks up outside the Hab, the storm blowing over them in gentle, but insistent gusts, because he’s far too busy trying to wrap his mind around the fact that he’s succeeded. After all these years, all the setbacks and disappointments and tantrums, they’ve finally done it. They’ve made this planet sustainable.

Tooru’s job here is done.

A soft patter against the roof of the Hab finally breaks Tooru from his reverie. It’s a rhythmic, metallic _plink_ that expands across the roof, and then down the walls of the Hab. He looks up, as does the rest of his team, all of them staring at the metal roof with something akin to shock.

“Rain,” Futakuchi supplies, sounding a bit breathless. And Tooru doesn’t blame him. With the winds as strong as they usually are, there hasn’t been an actual rainstorm in all the time they’ve been on this planet. The water got too mixed with the dirt and debris each storm kicked up, creating something of a mud barrage that often left the Hab and rovers plastered in cracked, brown mud in the aftermath. Actual rain is rare. It’s exciting.

Futakuchi is the first to bolt from his chair, with Yahaba and Bokuto running right at his heels. They open the door of the Hab and shout in pleasure as the first drops of water fall against their skin. Tooru isn’t even given a chance to protest before they shoot out the door and into the storm. Not that he thinks his warnings would have any effect. They’re too excited to listen now. Even Tooru recognizes that.

Akaashi sighs softly, but watches the other three go with a fond smile. “We should probably make sure they don’t hurt themselves,” he says as he stands from his chair and walks outside.

Tooru follows after him, but pauses in the doorway. He watches Bokuto pull Akaashi by the hand into some sort of clumsy tango that takes them from the door of the Hab all the way to the edge of the fields, leaving the both of them drenched and laughing in the light downpour. Futakuchi and Yahaba stand back to back in the storm. Futakuchi has his tongue out, attempting to catch raindrops on his tongue, while Yahaba simply closes his eyes and lets the water soak through his hair and down his face in tiny rivulets that catch on his eyelashes and the upturned corners of his lips.

There’s a faint sense of deja vu about the whole thing. A familiarity with the simple joy and awe of seeing rain after so long without it that takes Tooru back to another time, another place— back to a lab on Earth and two, strong hands and the happiness of dancing in the warm, summer rain.

“ _Come on, Oikawa,”_ Hajime had said to him. “ _Let loose. Live a little.”_

Tooru closes his eyes and breathes in deep, feeling his muscles loosen and relax as he exhales. He steps forward, walks into the storm, feels the water fall against his skin and soak into his clothes. And he smiles. He finally feels at home.

 

* * *

 

When Tooru wakes up that morning, it’s not with an immediate sense of dread. It’s not with sadness or fear or anxiety or any of the things he probably should have felt. No, none of that comes until later, when he walks into the greenhouse, looks at his calendar, and realizes, _oh. Today is the day Hajime goes to light speed._

He sits heavily in his stool and stares at the calendar on his desk, at the rainbow circles and stars highlighting the day, and feels vaguely winded. Like all the breath’s been stolen right out of his lungs.

He’s known this day was coming. Of course he has. It’s all he’s thought about since reconnecting with Hajime and choosing to see this through, feeling it haunt his mind and his every interaction with Hajime like a dark cloud. Like a storm rolling in across the plains. And now the storm’s arrived and he’s caught in its path, without any shelter in sight.

1,825 days without Hajime in his life— give or take a few. The reality of it hits him harder than he expects. Leaves him almost catatonic, and once again Tooru has to wonder how the hell Hajime managed to survive all those years of silence when Tooru doesn’t think he can even last this first hour.

He can’t do this. It’s too painful. There’s too much time, and Tooru feels so alone already, and he just can’t handle this. He can’t, he can’t, he _can’t_ —

There’s a soft _ping_ from his desktop. Tooru glances over and see the little, red bubble notifying him of an unread message, which he briefly considers ignoring. But JAXA isn’t supposed to send him anything today, and none of his crew uses the message system for each other except on field excursions. Whatever it is must be important then. At the very least, it’s distracting. And distracting is what Tooru needs right now, before he spirals into a panic attack.

He clicks the message, and feels his breath get stolen all over again when it finally pops up across the screen.

_-One day at a time. I’ll see you soon.-_

It’s unsigned, but then it doesn’t need to be. Tooru knows who sent it, and he knows what it’s trying to say. He knows, and the knowledge trickles through his body like sunshine, filling and filling and filling him with so much light and warmth that he can almost forget the pain of the separation. It fills his chest to bursting, and breaks the tight grip of anxiety on his lungs so he can breathe again. And he does. Deep, calming breaths that smooth his worries and loosen the knots of tension in his muscles.

It still hurts. And the days still loom like a giant wall before him. But, somehow, Hajime’s words help make it feel more manageable. Remind him that the separation is temporary, and at the end they’ll see each other again. Not just through a video screen, in actuality. That they’ll be able to reach out and actually touch each other. They’ll be together.

 _“Every day was just another day closer to you,”_ Hajime had said.

Tooru breathes in, and breathes out. He looks at his calendar again, then picks up a red marker from the pen holder beside his cactus and uses it to mark a giant, red X over the rainbow mess on the day’s square.

Day one. Only 1,824 more to go.

 

* * *

 

From: Oikawa, T.  
To: Iwaizumi, H.

I love you. I miss you. I’ll see you soon.

Can’t wait!

 

* * *

 

Sol 1,789  
Log #790

We’ve now successfully planted and harvested five consecutive batches of crops without any sort of problem or setback! I think it’s safe to say this colony is officially sustainable. And just in time! The second crew should be arriving any day now. It’s nice knowing we won’t have to ration or worry about food even with a few extra people. We have enough to go around!

Yahaba and I are slowly working on expanding our fields and creating some sort of farming system for the Hab. We now have a pretty large wheat field growing beside the greenhouse, separate from all the rest of our crops. It’s a little strange seeing the barren land we chose as home base covered in green sprouts and the golden waves of wheat, but in a good way. In a way that makes me feel proud. In a way that really makes this feel like home.

I can’t wait for the second crew to arrive! I want to show Hajime what I’ve been doing while he was at light speed! I hope he’s surprised!

 

* * *

 

“Hey, Oikawa,” Hajime calls through the headsets of their EVA suits. “Come over and check this out.”

Tooru sets down the ice sample tube he’s been unloading from the back of the rover and glances over at Hajime, who’s standing near the front of the rover with his back towards Tooru, apparently looking up at something. Tooru doesn’t know what. They’re outside the Amazonis Planitia research center, where they’ve lived seeing this same, red landscape every day for the past month. And, in all honesty, it’s just not that interesting anymore. He feels like he’s seen it all. From the bright metal walls of the research center, to the distant peaks of Olympus Mons that stretch across the horizon, dark now with the coming of night.

Hajime isn’t looking at the ground, though. He’s looking at the sky, body tilted slightly back in order to get a better angle, since the helmets of their EVA suits only allow for so much mobility, and that doesn’t include looking up.

And, well, it might be getting dark outside, and they should probably be heading inside so the research center can be sealed for the night, but Tooru’s _curious_. So he heads over to Hajime, bouncing just slightly in the lower gravity of Mars with each step.

“What’s up, Iwa-chan?” he asks as he lands at Hajime’s side. Hajime points up at one of the stars appearing in the darkness— tiny, but brighter than anything else in the sky.

It’s Earth, Tooru realizes. Mars is finally in the right position to see Earth, far away though it is. And Tooru can only stand there, gazing up at the planet they left behind only a few weeks ago, in awe of just how far they’ve come.

“It’s so tiny,” Hajime comments. He stretches out his arms and frames the bright spot with both hands, as if taking a mental snapshot. Tooru glances at him for a moment, then reaches out to do the same. Somehow, between his two hands, Earth looks even smaller. An insignificant dot against the vastness of space. “To think we were just there a few weeks ago, and now here we are: nearly three hundred million miles away.”

It’s strange when Hajime puts it that way— the stark difference between the bustling cities of Earth and the empty, rusting landscape of Mars, and how rapidly they went from one to the other— but, in a way, it just isn’t _enough._ It’s not satisfying in the way Tooru expected. As if coming this far is him dipping his toes into the swimming pool, and now he just wants to cannonball right in.

“I’m going to go even further one day,” he says. “Somewhere no one else has been. So far you can’t even see Earth.” He turns to look at Hajime, at the sharp lines of his profile and the barely-there smile threatening to break out across his lips, and feels his heart flip over and squeeze in a strange way that makes him almost bashful as he asks, “You’ll come with me, right? To that place?”

Hajime turns and stares at him for a few, silent seconds that leave Tooru breathless in anticipation. Then he snorts.

“Of course, dumbass,” he says, gently punching Tooru’s upper arm and grinning like Tooru’s just told the funniest joke in the world. “I told you you’re stuck with me forever, remember? You don’t even need to ask.”

 

* * *

 

Tooru hears the Mikaboshi II crew members before he sees them. Their voices carry through the metal walls of the Hab and into common room, where Tooru’s sitting, going over the technicalities of a few Hab-expansion plans with Akaashi. Tooru looks up at the sound and stares at the door, waiting with a churning gut as the voices get louder and louder, moving from where the rover is probably parked to the entrance of the Hab.

He probably looks ridiculous— nervous and excited and nauseous all at once. His foot taps impatiently against the floor, while at the same time he falls deathly silent, too anxious to even speak. He’s afraid if he even opens his mouth, he’ll say something stupid. Or perhaps he might vomit. His stomach certainly is queasy enough.

It’s been five years since he’s last seen Hajime. Five years since they’ve talked. Five years since they’ve exchanged a single word. At least for Tooru it’s been five years; he knows Hajime’s only experienced a week or two since their last messages. But that only serves to make Tooru more nervous.

Has he changed during that time? Does he look different? Act different? Is there even a trace of his old self left for Hajime to recognize?

The questions and possibilities circle about his head in an endless loop as the door opens and the first members of the new crew walk inside, led by Yahaba, who seems to be vehemently arguing with a sour-faced guy named Kyoutani, and Futakuchi, who’s busy egging the both of them on in turn. Their voices are the ones carrying through the walls, loud and raucous and growing ever more heated by the minute. They’re going to be a handful, Tooru realizes with a soft sigh. As if Futakuchi and Yahaba weren’t bad enough on their own already.

At least the other Mikaboshi II members seem more levelheaded. The two females— Mai and Kiyoko, their new genetics and chemistry experts respectively— are relatively quiet as they take in the Hab and all its little quirks with critical eyes. Tooru also recognizes Yaku among the crew, and then a very tall blond Tooru assumes is their Russian crew candidate, Lev.

Tooru barely spares a glance at them. There will be more time in the future to exchange pleasantries and get to know each other. For now, Tooru is too focused on the final member of their crew. The man standing in the doorway and staring directly at Tooru.

“Hajime!” Tooru exclaims, forgetting all of his earlier insecurities and leaping out of his seat to run across the room.

Hajime meets him halfway, sweeping Tooru into a tight embrace as soon as they’re close enough to touch. His arms wrap firmly around Tooru’s waist while Tooru clings to his shoulders and tucks his face into the crook of Hajime’s neck, breathing in Hajime’s scent between his breathless sobs of “You’re here, you’re here, you’re here.”

He still smells the same— like fresh pine and sunlight. He’s just as warm and sturdy as Tooru remembers too, and Tooru melts against him. All but collapses in Hajime’s embrace. Not that Hajime seems to mind.

“Tooru,” he murmurs, as soft and reverent as a prayer. Breathless. As if speaking any louder might break the spell and wake him up from a dream. But this isn’t some dream or fantasy. They aren’t asleep. Hajime’s here and he’s holding Tooru in his arms, pressed so tightly together Tooru can’t quite tell where he ends and Hajime begins. And when Hajime slips his fingers up Tooru’s back and into the feathery strands of hair at the nape of Tooru’s neck, he lets out a long sigh of relief and tries to somehow hold Tooru even closer. “I told you,” he breathes against Tooru’s ear. “I told you we’d make it.”

Tooru turns his head to nuzzle beneath Hajime’s ear and laughs against his skin. He’s not talking about any sort of physical distance so much as he’s talking about the emotional one, and the words bring Tooru back to that night in their kitchen back on Earth when Tooru had laid out all his worries about this mission to Hajime in the soft glow of the candles, with Tooru’s attempt at ramen steaming away on the table. How far away that night seems now. How insignificant and silly it appears in the face of this moment here. Right now.

“I love you,” he says, because it’s the right time to say it. He doesn’t even care that the other crew members are probably still in the room, watching this entire exchange. Hajime is all he can focus on. All he cares about. And he hasn’t said this to Hajime nearly often enough, so he says it again. “I love you, Hajime. I really, really do.”

Hajime kisses him then, and when their lips touch it feels like a homecoming and a promise all at once. A taste of everything that’s been, and everything that will be. Because the two of them, like this, are everything. The sun and the moon, the land and the sea, the beginning and the end. Like binary stars, always together in orbit, incomplete without the other.

They break apart and the hand in Tooru’s hair tightens for a moment before Hajime lets go. Then takes a step back. Tooru lets him go with reluctance, but contents himself with holding one of Hajime’s hands while Hajime uses the other to take something from his pocket. His fist is closed around the object, so Tooru can’t tell what it is. Not until Hajime shifts his grip on Tooru’s hand, and Tooru feels cool metal against his fingers.

“I got these a while ago. Back before the Mikaboshi crews were announced,” Hajime says as he slips a slim, gold band onto the ring finger of Tooru’s left hand. Tooru stares at the ring, and then at Hajime, who Tooru can now see is wearing a matching ring on his own left hand. The same hand he uses to gently pull Tooru’s head down so their foreheads are pressed together, and Tooru can see nothing but the warmth of Hajime’s eyes. “When I said you’d be stuck with me forever, I meant it,” he whispers into the silence between them. Then grins. “I guess I probably should have asked you first though.”

“No,” Tooru says. He clutches Hajime’s hand tighter, savoring the weight of the ring on his finger, the way it seems to anchor him to Hajime at long last, and he laughs. “You don’t need to. You never need to ask. My answer will always be yes.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am SOOOOOOOOOOOOO, SO sorry this took so long to complete!!!! I didn't realize how much writing it would take out of me ;;;;;; thank you so much to everyone that stuck with this and got excited for this and read this! You guys are the absolute best!
> 
> Special shout out to my squad for dealing with my random bouts of inspiration and my more frequent complaining. /finger guns/ I love you guys <3


End file.
